Know My Voice®
July 29, 2026
If you scrolled on any social platform over the last week or two, you may have seen a trend emerging on: “5 things worth the money”. People are sharing their 5 things they find worth the investment for a variety of areas in life.
I decided to offer my 5 things worth the investment focused on work and life technology needs. I am an Apple user and there are several products and services that I depend on each day.
Below are my top 5 things worth the investment: Apple Edition
(ps… this is not an ad, just me sharing my preferences)
1.MacBook Pro (over Air):
The Air is lighter and that is an advantage. However, I often feel limited in what I can accomplish with the Air in terms of connecting to other devices. I prefer the Pro. The Pro has more ports to connect devices such as display monitors, charging cables, headphones and more.
2. iCloud Drive:
Sync your files to iCloud and pay for the extra storage. Keep everything in one location that is accessible from any Apple device. Nothing should be kept on your hard drive that is not also backed up somewhere else. The Cloud allows for greater flexibility than an external hard drive. (However, both are valuable if you want a 3rd back up).
3. Apple Care:
Apple Care is similar to insurance but for your tech needs. You likely have a deductible for each item that needs assistance with some things covered at no cost. A check in at the Genius Bar and evaluation will tell you what you need. In the last few months, I have needed Apple Care for both my MacBook Pro and one of my iPhones. I recently learned that you can bundle several items for a condensed price each month.
4. Air Tags:
I love these little discs! How many times have you traveled and wondered:
or
or
Well, now I have an Air Tag in my car, attached to my keychain and also in the car. When I need to, I can go to “Find My” on my iPhone and search for the item (or device). These are well worth the expense.
(I would love to see these also applied to hospital equipment when nurses are looking for pumps, poles, wheelchairs, tubes for the tube system and more).
5. iPhone: Choose your preferred model
I am a double iPhone user with a 13 Pro Max and a 17 Pro Max. However, I have had many of the iPhones over the years. I do not buy a new one each year but do upgrade after a few years as the software ages out and the camera usually gets better.
There are now multiple models and different sizes on the iPhone. The integration with the apps and my MacBook Pro, iCloud Drive, Find My, Air Tags and more make it all an integrated system.
There are a few other Apple products I depend on each day, but these are my top 5! (There are also a couple I have but never really adopted however those items are much fewer in number).
Sincerely,
~ Dr. Tiffany Kelley PhD MBA RN NI-BC FNAP FAAN
June 20, 2025 |
Take a listen to episode 3 of the audio blog, Know My Voice ®, where I discuss the concept of Human Centered Technology in relation to how we should be approaching healthcare technology design. Concepts included in this episode include: human centered technology, push and pull of information, technology design, and the importance of the human in all of this with regard to how technology is designed for use.
May 07, 2025
Today, May 6th, marks the start of Nurses Week…
I started this journey as a candy striper volunteer at Jordan Hospital on the weekends in High School to help bring patients to their cars on discharge from the hospital. I wanted teh experience before nursing school at Georgetown.
I would often get asked why I wanted to become a nurse, and not a doctor. It turns out that you can be both 😉 (after a lot of years in higher education).
I have spent much on the last 20 years asking why and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in this profession. I can tire people out with my questions and vision for what should be, and not yet is, but I keep going…
My trajectory has given me the opportunity to speak to others in a variety of ways about how to think about the profession as well as creating one’s own personal trajectory.
Today, I reflected on Nurses Week as I recorded a promotional video for an upcoming event where I will serve as the Opening Keynote Speaker.
When I do speak, I often reflect back on what it was like as that new nurse and how much effort it took to get there. You can see me here as a nursing student in clinical at Georgetown in my starchy clinical outfit!
Nurses are the largest group of healthcare professionals in the world. There are 4x as many nurses to medical doctors.
Nurses are masters at knowing how to suggest treatments to doctors without making the doctors feel like it was not their initial idea (this helps build relationships 🙂 ).
Nurses are also masters at knowing something is off or not right with you (at work of course, but also with friends, family, and even strangers outside of work), without even saying anything… They will likely start trying to help you or ask you questions to figure out how they can help.
However, taking care of ourselves, as nurses, is hard at times. We have been trained to care for others first and literally put the needs of others before our own basic needs (e.g., lunch and bathroom breaks for example).
One way you can take care of yourself is taking that step forward that you have been wanting to take but have been nervous about making the move…
Maybe it is a new job, a new role, a new degree, a new specialty, a new schedule… Maybe it is not now but in the next few years.
Whatever you choose, embrace serendipity along the way….
~ Tiffany Kelley PhD MBA RN NI-BC FNAP
March 24, 2025 |
So many data elements distributed across so many screens….
Pre-check online forms in texts…
Paper forms on clipboards…
Online forms in the waiting room…
Screening questions during the appointment…
Many duplicative questions asked by those who do not make the decisions on what to ask..
Existing answers to many of these questions already in the EHR….
For a patient this can be quite frustrating to experience.
Why is this data collection experience broken into so many pieces?
Who is putting the puzzle together?
How is this level of data fragmentation making the patient’s experience, patient centered or dare I say, person centered?
Patient-centered care is one of the six dimensions of care quality as defined by the Institute of Medicine (IOM, now National Academy of Medicine).
That term is defined as, “Providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.”
After all, isn’t the premise of healthcare to provide care to the person who is seeking it for the person’s health?
~ Tiffany
Tiffany Kelley PhD MBA RN NI-BC FNAP
Founder & CEO
Nightingale Apps
March 23, 2025 |
Their patients come first, often even before themselves.
On January 13th, the Gallup poll released its data for the most honest and ethical professions as ranked by the public.
“Three in four Americans consider nurses highly honest and ethical, making them the most trusted of 23 professions rated in Gallup’s annual measurement.”
As a nurse, this is of course a great honor to continue to receive this recognition from the public for over two decades straight.
Nurses operate according to the American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics. The code of ethics has 9 provisions. The first provision is:
“The nurse practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person.”
A core principle of patient care delivery is providing individualized care. To deliver individualized care, nurses come to know their patients.
Individualized care differentiates the patient experience from feeling like a number or diagnosis to that of feeling like you are a person who is a patient in that moment.
We learn the role of ethics in nursing early in our undergraduate nursing educational preparation and it is continually reinforced throughout clinical rotations and in practice.
Ethics often supersede regulation requirements. What does this mean?
What may be possible to do through regulations (or the lack thereof), may not necessarily be ethical. Therefore, extra protections will often be taken on top of regulatory protections.
This will especially be of consideration for forthcoming artificial intelligence (AI) tools that aim to support consumers with answers to health related questions.
Another example may be the expectation to turn a patient every two hours. That would be the minimum. A nurse may find that another patient may need to be turned more frequently to optimally heal or relieve pain.
Nurses take great pride in providing optimal care for patients and to do so in an ethical manner. Their patients come first, often even before themselves. The public’s recognition of trust in nurses is of great value.
A link to the article from Gallup on this year’s released rankings can be found here.
~ Tiffany Kelley
PhD MBA RN NI-BC FNAP
Founder & CEO,
Nightingale Apps
January 25, 2025
Patients are people first. Patients are people who should have a voice in their care.
Patients are people. While this is inherently known amongst us all, the words do have some differences in meaning within healthcare settings.
The first pilot research study that I conducted investigated the meaning of knowing the patient. To know the patient is to know the clinical aspects of the individual as well as the personal aspects of the individual.
Of course, it is essential to understand the clinical needs of the individual patient. This includes the diagnosis, reason for visit, treatments and plan of care to name a few items.
However, as a person, the personal aspects of the the individual can be overlooked at times when a patient. This could be any type of preference. However patients tend to have categories of preferences. For example, I know that my right antecubital vein is very difficult to find in my arm whereas the one on the left tends to be easier. Knowing this as a healthcare provider can make a significant difference for the patient who sees his or herself as a person first.
Knowing this can save unnecessary sticks in the arm when knowing that the phlebotomist has a great chance of being unsuccessful the first time. Knowing this can make the person feel known as a patient. Knowing this can improve the patient experience overall.
Patient-centered care is one of the six categories of healthcare quality as defined by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine).
Patient-centered care is defined as, “Providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.”.
After all, patients are people too. Patients are people first. Patients are people who should have a voice in their care.
For patients, be sure to ask questions and share information that can help provide more individualized care.
For nurses, doctors and all healthcare professional roles, be sure to include patients in their care. They are the reason we are there and deserve to have a high quality experience.
Dr. Kelley has 25 years of nursing and healthcare experience. She spent the last 21 years working in the field of nursing informatics. Read more
