top of page

Nurse Who Writes
Field Notes


The Certification Mirage: How Functional Nursing Turned Credentials Into Commerce
And while the intent might be genuine—wellness, nutrition, mental health, balance—the machinery behind it is not just about care.

R.E. Hengsterman


Between Conspiracy and Cure: What RFK Jr. and Healthcare Get Right—and What They Get Wrong
Kennedy channels concerns many Americans quietly share: the feeling that healthcare is too corporate, too impersonal, and too quick to medicate. Behind the noise, he’s identified legitimate systemic flaws.

R.E. Hengsterman


The Myth of “Alkaline & Acidic Foods”: Why What You Eat Can’t Change Your Blood pH
The logic sounds simple: if acidity causes disease, eating alkaline foods should prevent it. The problem? That’s not how human physiology works.

R.E. Hengsterman


Keep It Simple: My Nutrition Philosophy for Shift Workers
At roughly 100 kilograms, that’s a lot of protein—enough to make eating feel like a full-time job some days. I don’t always hit the mark, but I try. Protein becomes increasingly important as we age, supporting muscle maintenance, recovery, and metabolic health.

R.E. Hengsterman


The Illusion of Freedom: Understanding the Soft Nursing Trend
Their message? You too can have it all—autonomy, freedom, six figures—if you just learn the system. (AKA - Buy my course on sale for only $129)

R.E. Hengsterman


The Common Myth of Adrenal Fatigue: Why “Puffy Eyes” Aren’t a Diagnosis
A “fitness expert” recently floated across my feed, claiming women shouldn’t do HIIT workouts on consecutive days because of adrenal fatigue—and that the puffiness under her eyes was evidence of it.

R.E. Hengsterman


The Functional Nursing Hustle Culture
“In the attention economy, beauty is currency—and the algorithm always pays the pretty first.”

R.E. Hengsterman


If We Left Biology to Human Choice
That’s what the anti-vaccine movement does: it treats biology as optional and expertise as negotiable. It confuses autonomy with authority — as if personal preference can rewrite cellular intelligence or immune memory.

R.E. Hengsterman


Cold Showers & Morning Stroke: Risk, Hype, and the Truth Beneath the Ice
But like most health trends that get boiled down (or in this case, chilled down) to a viral headline, there’s a kernel of truth buried beneath the hyperbole.

R.E. Hengsterman


Exploring the Role of Nurse Authors
The journey may include challenges such as fatigue, self-doubt, or finding the right audience. Yet, the rewards are profound: the ability to influence public perception, contribute to nursing scholarship, and leave a literary legacy that honors the profession.

R.E. Hengsterman


The Hijacking of “Root Cause”: How Social Media Turned a Medical Principle into a Hashtag
But here’s the irony: “root cause” isn’t new. It’s not the property of wellness culture or functional medicine. It’s the foundation of medicine itself.

R.E. Hengsterman


The Nursing Strike That Never Sleeps: 31,000 Kaiser Nurses Walk Out for Wages, Staffing, and Sanity
This isn’t a single-unit labor dispute. It’s pharmacists, respiratory therapists, midwives, hospital aides, lab techs, and housekeepers—all united in a collective message: the system is broken, and it’s breaking us.

R.E. Hengsterman


Fighting Fatigue from Within: Behind the Scenes of a New Sleep Fix for Night-Shift Nurses
But most sleep “solutions” still target individuals, not systems. Melatonin pills and blackout curtains can’t fix a 12-hour night shift that rotates every two weeks. Nor can “self-care” bandage a roster that violates basic chronobiology.

R.E. Hengsterman


The Shift Worker’s Paradox: A Book for Every Shift Worker — Written by a Nurse Who’s Lived It
The Shift Worker’s Paradox combines decades of bedside nursing experience with cutting-edge research in chronobiology, neuroscience, and behavioral health.

R.E. Hengsterman


When Science Meets Facebook: The Myth of Seeing “Heavy Metals” in Someone’s Eyes
There’s no screening for intelligence on Facebook. No licensing exam to post about medicine. And in those unmoderated comments, silence from the informed too often drowns beneath the chorus of the medically undereducated.

R.E. Hengsterman


We’re All Fallible — Why This Moment Calls for Grace and Accountability
Tadlock fails field sobriety tests, is arrested, and allegedly threatens the officers, saying she’ll “let them die” if they ever land in her hospital. By morning, she’s unemployed, trending, and branded “the nurse from hell.”

R.E. Hengsterman


The Cost of Linguistic Drift & Vaccine Panic
“Jab” isn’t the only word that’s been linguistically hollowed out. Over the last few years, a string of once-clinical terms have been co-opted, softened, or politicized — their precision replaced by cultural shorthand.

R.E. Hengsterman


When Nursing Becomes a Brand: Ethics, Crowds, and Commerce
They post about self-care routines, share product links, host courses on burnout and wellness, and partner with brands to sell supplements or scrubs. They speak in the language of empowerment and authenticity, balancing clinical authority with personal story.

R.E. Hengsterman


The Myth of the “Artificial” Nursing Shortage
It’s a powerful narrative. It turns frustration into a moral cause. It reframes burnout as resistance. But like many things that thrive on social media, it’s also incomplete—and often wrong.

R.E. Hengsterman


The Rise of the Functional Nurse: When Healing Turns Inward
In many ways, the functional nurse is a mirror held up to modern medicine. A reflection of what happens when empathy, autonomy, and time become luxuries.

R.E. Hengsterman
bottom of page