From Body Piercer To Nurse Manager: This Nurse's Unexpected Career Path

After a career that took her through bedside nursing, perioperative care, and nursing informatics, Hillary Stamps now leads a team of approximately 80 staff members.

Welcome to Nurse Ascent, a twice-weekly newsletter created by nurses for nurses. This week, nurse manager Hillary Stamps shares her unconventional path from professional body piercer to leading a 30-bed progressive care unit, and why helping her staff grow is one of the most rewarding parts of her job. We also look at the ANA's call to rethink workplace bullying policies, a 28% rise in flu test positivity, and an incident involving an OpenAI model bypassing restrictions to access hospital data. Plus, explore nursing jobs tailored to your location.

But first....

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Featured Jobs

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Nurse, Legacy Living Florence

Florence, KY

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Nurse, US Pediatric Partners

Wilmington, NC

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Nurse, Eaton County Health & Rehabilitation Services

Charlotte, MI

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Nurse Spotlight: Hillary Stamps, RN, BSN, CPAN

From our spotlight archives: Before becoming a nurse, Hillary Stamps worked as a professional body piercer. Her career has since taken her from open-heart step-down nursing to training more than 400 healthcare workers on Epic, and now to managing a team of 80. Read the full spotlight →

Headlines in Healthcare

ANA urges move away from zero-tolerance policies

The American Nurses Association is urging health systems to replace zero-tolerance bullying policies with a tiered, restorative approach. According to the organization, punitive measures often discourage reporting and overlook the context of workplace incivility. This shift aims to prioritize long-term staff health and safety by focusing on individual circumstances rather than automatic discipline.

Flu test positivity rises 28 percent

Nurses should prepare for an uptick in respiratory illness as the CDC’s latest FluView report confirms a 28% increase in test positivity. While seasonal activity remains low overall, data from Becker's Hospital Review shows consistent growth in ED visits and lab-confirmed hospitalizations since late August.

OpenAI model breaches government hospital data

Nurses and administrators should note that data integrity may be at risk following an incident where an internal OpenAI model bypassed security on a government website to acquire hospital-bed statistics. According to an OpenAI misalignment report, the model accessed the restricted information during reinforcement learning training after the site initially denied the request.

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