Award-winning Actor, Author, Filmmaker and Nurse

Dr. Candace (Candy) Campbell, aka: The Innovation Nurse, aside from her academic, administrative, and clinical expertise, is an international speaker, award-winning actor, author, and filmmaker. Her mission is to create work that educates, enlightens, and entertains.

As a consultant with 40 years in healthcare, she blends her experience in art and science to achieve positive system change by working with executive leaders and corporations who want to distinguish themselves as great communicators. The work includes strategic leadership retreat planning and facilitating various inter-professional communication, leadership, and teambuilding programs.

As an academic, Campbell’s qualitative research projects and assorted articles include inquiry on: the psycho-social effects of clinicians serving in combat; the familial psycho-social effects of having borne an extremely low birthweight baby (ELBW); the effect of elective Caesarean section on mothers and newborns; healthcare public policy in the US; the writings of the iconic polymath who launched the profession of caring, Florence Nightingale; and the interprofessional communication impact of a process improvement program of applied improvisational exercises from the arts.

Dr. Campbell’s first degree is in Speech Communications and Theatre/Acting. This ability of being able to imagine yourself in someone else’s skin, and not taking yourself too seriously, has supported her practice within and outside the nursing profession.

As a patient and healthcare advocate, Candy’s MSN was in Healthcare Systems Management; the master’s thesis (re: grassroots organizing and public health policy) was completed while serving as an advocate in Sacramento, with the American Nurses Association/California. A year-long advocacy (ANA AI) fellowship grant award followed; her project was to assist the Honor Society of Nursing (STTI) to win a seat at the table in the United Nations. (Done!)

Candy created Peripatetic Productions in 1995 as a vehicle to produce her first one-woman show, Whatever Happened to My Paradigm.  Next, Full Frontal Nursing: A Comedy With Dark Spots, which played in San Francisco in 1998 to critical acclaim and allowed entry into ASCAP as lyricist and composer.  The third solo show, the acclaimed, An Evening With Florence Nightingale: A Reluctant Celebrity, has been presented to nursing associations and general public audiences in the United States, Canada, England, and Ireland.

She has won awards as an actress (The Calling, 2002 (film); Full Frontal Nursing (stage);Funny Girl (stage), author (My Mom Is A Nurse), film maker (Micropremature Babies: How Low Can You Go?), and portrait artist (numerous festival awards).

Other books include Channeling Florence Nightingale: Integrity, Insight, Innovation, and Improv to Improve Healthcare: A System for Creative Problem Solving, the first of four books on improv, based upon her doctoral work and many years as an improv actor and coach. (The book also serves as educational material for the “Tear Down Walls and Build Bridges” corporate workshops.)

As a sought-after keynote speaker, Candy gives insights on a wide range of healthcare history, clinical research, and leadership topics.

Other pursuits include performing as Nightingale, painting portraits, and playing with her grandchildren.

Most Popular Topics:

“Improv to Improve Healthcare” 

or

“Improv to Improve Your Leadership Team”  

Allowing for Safe & Creative Risk-Taking: Improv games and exercises teach us how to become someone who is comfortable taking creative risks for our business, entrepreneurship, and personal lives. Nothing exciting or new happens in business without creative risks. All businesses and associations are being called upon to work in new and innovative ways. Candy will teach your audiences how to “park their egos and play nice,” so they can solve problems and innovate real solutions.

1. Identify causes of miscommunication in the workplace 
2. Summarize the scientific basis for new communication tools to help tear down walls of cultural hierarchy in healthcare 
3. Demonstrate understanding of at least two basic principles of Applied Improvisational Exercises (AIE) covered in this presentation 
4. Relate how you will integrate knowledge of AIEs to boost personal emotional intelligence and create an atmosphere of safety in the workplace, to establish new patterns of self-confidence, trust, spontaneity, understanding, adaptability, and/or problem-solving within your teams 

Books:  

Improv to Improve Healthcare: A System for Creative Problem-Solving  

Improv to Improve Your Leadership Team: Tear Down Walls and Build Bridges 

An Evening With Florence Nightingale: The Reluctant Celebrity 

Welcome to the world of Victorian England, where women were considered possessions and had no right to obtain higher education, own land, have a bank account, or vote.

Pushing back against the status quo, Nightingale was a visionary statistician and social reformer, researcher, author, adventurer, nurse, and population health advocate who, when she returned from the Crimean War (and for the next 50 years), used her celebrity status to influence health policy—on four continents — as a semi-invalid!

Join Miss Nightingale, as she shows you a new way to think about healthcare — from the way you thought it was, to the way it may become.

Learning Outcomes 

1. Discuss the Victorian age perception of women and their capability to render intellectual or scientifically based opinions on any subject, other than domestic issues 
2. Explain the social implications of Victorian women and how that relates to modern life? 
3. Deliberate how Florence Nightingale overcame personal and professional roadblocks to her career 
4. Relate how Nightingale, during her last 50 years, was able to influence much of the health and sanitation regulations and policies on four continents as a disabled person.  

VIRTUAL

Building our changing future is all about collaboration. As a certified virtual presenter (CVP), Candy helps participants explore new ways of collaborating that benefits them in deep and meaningful ways. She puts energy and fun back into your interactions (even if you’re having all your conference calls over zoom!), ensuring strong connections and a vibrant company while apart. Learning powerful presentation techniques is an evergreen skill we need to continually polish. 

Presentation Jitters? Turn “Yikes!” to “Yippee!” 

(usually a 60 min presentation…90 min. if we add a “hotseat” component) 

Learning Outcomes 

1. Differentiate at least 3 ways to BORE and SNORE an audience into regretting they ever met you 
2. Demonstrate at least 3 ways to ENGAGE and ASSUAGE an audience to pledge your undying devotion  
3. Analyze the 3 elements of EVERY successful presentation  
4. Practice appropriate warm-ups to workout the nerves before your presentation
   

Lessons from a Reluctant Nurse Filmmaker – The Making of the Award-Winning Film, Micropremature Babies: How Low Can You Go?  

(Best for Women’s Health group – AWHONN, NANN, Synova, etc.) 

As a healthcare professional, what keeps you up at night? Is there a particular clinical problem that haunts you? Join Dr. Candy Campbell as she takes you on the 5-year research journey that became an award-winning film and continues to shed light on our smallest minority: micro-premature babies. Candy explains how you, too, can utilize your skills to create a visual tool to touch hearts, fund research, and reach millions of people. 

Learning Outcomes 

1. Explain how primary-source journalism differs from the usual academic research 
2. Discuss the challenges and necessary training needed to create a documentary film in 2000 vs 2023? 
3. Debate the application of the film’s PICO question: How does the birth/NICU stay of an ELBW baby impact the family unit?  
4. Deliberate the timely concern of the associated question: How can we better serve these families?