A Lakota Nurse Practitioner's Journey to Empowering Indigenous Patients and Students with Whitney Fear, MSN, PMHNP-BC
Adrianne is excited to welcome Whitney Fear, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner who lives and works in Fargo, North Dakota. You may recognize her from Shift Nursing’s documentary Who Cares? A Nurse’s Fight for Equity, a powerful film that follows her as she works to provide care on the Pine Ridge reservation where she grew up. Pine Ridge is one of the poorest areas in the United States with some of the lowest life expectancy rates. The film highlights the work being done to improve the quality of life for the people who call it home.
Whitney is a woman of the Oglala Lakota Nation and works at a federally qualified health center that takes a holistic and trauma-informed approach to treat behavioral health and substance use disorders. She highlights that healthcare is far more than appointments, prescriptions, and forced compliance to care plans. Her methods are the focus of this conversation.
“I think that indigenous people have huge potential to be fantastic healthcare providers because our cultural belief systems are so aligned with holism.
And once I got over that imposter syndrome, I just, I feel like this was like, I, I'm so prepared for this field because of my upbringing & life. It’s such a natural fit and, you know, I would like young people from indigenous backgrounds to know, like, you could be really great at this so naturally.”
Whitney and Adrianne discuss a range of topics in this hour including:
Imposter syndrome and how it holds us back; her personal experiences and lessons
Challenges of being a 1st generation college student from a non-traditional background
Why diversity among healthcare providers is so essential for providing quality care
Advice for creating safe spaces for conversation in the mental health care setting
LGBTQ+ care, discrimination, colonialism, and their intersections
What does and does not make an excellent provider in Whitney’s eyes
Don’t miss out on this engaging, unrestricted conversation, and be sure not to miss the SHIFT nursing documentary which you can find at shiftnursing.com/whocares or on SHIFT’s YouTube channel where it has over 389K views here.
Here’s the link if you need to cut and paste:
You can also find Whitney on TikTok @hwa_matho
Thank you to Whitney for taking the time to share such personal experiences and insights for the sake of others’ growth and education. She is one badass nurse.
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Recorded with Zoom and edited with Adobe Audition.
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Copyright-free music included in this episode found in the YouTube Audio Library:
Rich in the 89s by DivKid
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