The Synthesis Institute | Presents

The Explorer’s Edge Live Community Gatherings for Aspiring and Established Psychedelic Practitioners MARCH 2024 EDITION | The Intersection of Nursing and Psychedelics

Nursing New Perspectives In Psychedelic Care

Nursing Holistic Approaches to Healing

We gathered live on March 29th for an expert-led panel discussing the promising intersection between nursing and psychedelics. Our expert psychedelic nurses explored how holistic and compassionate nursing approaches are informing psychedelic care today, as well as discussed the potential of these approaches to complement the current medical model and elevate the standard of care to new dimensions.

Psychedelics have the potential to usher in new paradigms in healthcare.

The expert-led panel conversation explored the intersection of nursing and psychedelics, how nursing practice informs psychedelic care and vice versa, the unique role of nurses in providing somatic interventions, and the need for a holistic approach to healing that prioritizes care over cure.

In the recent past, as the grip of the pandemic tightened, we witnessed the imminent threat of a global collapse in care. Crisis, a potent catalyst for change, compels us to adapt and evolve, birthing new paradigms aligning with the evolving needs of our environment. Nurse practitioner and soul midwife Angela Ward suggests that recent events may steer us towards "a psychedelic model of medicine" rather than a "medical model of psychedelics."

 

As the mental health crisis prompted a reassessment of reductionist approaches to mind-body medicine, nurses emerge as crucial advisors on the medicalization of healing. Embracing the natural cycles of renewal and regeneration, alongside the inevitability of death and degeneration, allows us to collaborate with, rather than resist, natural processes, offering insights into sustainably transformative and holistic health.

 

On March 29th, we gathered in community to explore the potential of psychedelics to transform the healthcare system and its professions, as well as the competencies, challenges, pitfalls, and considerations tied to their clinical application. 

 

Hosted by Psychedelic Buddhist Chaplain, Educator, and Synthesis Faculty Daan Keiman, our panel of nurses consists of Holistic Nurse Practitioner Dr. Stephanie Van Hope, Palliative Care Consultant Ladybird Morgan, and Gateway-Guardian Angela Ward. 

 

This 90-minute community gathering, including a 60-minute panel conversation and 30-minute interactive Q&A, is for anyone exploring psychedelics as tools for transformation within a container embracing expansive approaches to the culture of care. 

 

If you're a nurse or healthcare professional intrigued by the potential applications in this field, a psychedelic practitioner looking to broaden your perspectives, or an individual drawn to exploring psychedelic insights in the context of integrative health, watch this recording.

 

Please note that this event was not designed to offer clinical or medical guidelines or advice.

 

During this complimentary 90-minute gathering, we explored:

  • Balancing Care Work and Cure Work: Shared frontline experiences of somatic care using real-life examples from the panelists’ nursing practice.
  • How Psychedelic Paradigms Affect Nursing Practices: Investigated how we can better support unmet needs around emotional and existential pain, particularly in dying and rebirthing processes.
  • How Psychedelic Perspectives Affect Individuals: Discussed how to empower patients within the process of their own care by re-evaluating outdated patriarchal power dynamics and explore better ways to support agency within the healthcare system.
  • Strengths and Challenges Facing Nurses: Discussed how real-world experiences may differ from clinical evidence and academic data due to the limitations faced by practitioners and researchers.
  • Integrating Nursing into Psychedelic Care: Explored the balance between trusting nature’s capacity to allow events to unfold in their own time and discerned the need for and timing of potential interventions.
  • Nursing Advocacy and Bridging Gaps in Healthcare: Discussed the over-management and medicalization of care by fostering approaches that turned towards life and death instead of medicating out of it.
  • Nursing Culture Changes: Bringing a ceremonial approach to hospital care, potentially instigating a culture change that holistically healed root causes instead of temporarily managing symptoms and side effects.
  • Experientially Informed Ethics and Intuitive Insights: Integrated the intangible elements of care, often absent from task-oriented approaches, and reconsider the concept of ‘curing’ and what constitutes sustainable change.
  • Exploring Systemic Challenges: Explored evidence from real-world experiences to navigate ethical, legal, and socio-cultural challenges facing more intuitive and somatic approaches to nursing psychedelic care within the current ecosystem.

 

REGISTER NOW

Our Expert Panel:

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Dr. Stephanie van Hope Click on picture to read bio

Dr. Stephanie Van Hope, RN, DNP is a registered nurse, certified nurse coach and doctor of nursing practice. She graduated with a DNP in the specialty of Integrative Health and Healing from the University of Minnesota in 2019. Stephanie has worked as a nurse for the last 12 years in the areas of oncology, hospice, health coaching, and education. In 2011 she served as a study guide for NYU’s Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety project, guiding cancer patients through psychedelic journeys with psilocybin. In 2021 she founded a continuing education course for nurses entitled Nursing & Sacred Medicine: Introduction to Psychedelic Therapy. She is a Reiki practitioner and a student of yoga, meditation, shamanic healing, plant medicine, music and dance, and the sacred traditions of many faiths. She currently resides with her husband and son in an intentional community in the Catskills region of New York

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Ladybird Morgan Click on picture to read bio

Ladybird Morgan RN, MSW, RCST practitioner, has helped guide medical practitioners, families, caregivers, programs, and institutions around the world (including with Doctors Without Borders and in California Prisons) on how to be present to difficult experiences by remembering, embodying, and responding from the deepest place of truth. Her work is informed by a lifetime commitment to meditation, sacred practices, and personal inquiry. Currently a private palliative care consultant with Mettlehealth and a co-facilitator for Commonweal’s Cancer Care Help Program and Healing Circles, she is also a co-investigator/study therapist with a University of Washington study of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy and the Co-Founder/Program Director of The Humane Prison Hospice Project.

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ANGELA WARD Click on picture to read bio

Angela Ward, BSN RN, HWNC-BC, is a nurse, nurse coach, former birth doula, graduate of the Synthesis Psychedelic Practitioner Training, and the founder of Guardian at the Gateway. She shares her personal journey as a survivor of PTSD, highlighting the profound impact psychedelic-assisted therapy had on her healing process. Angela emphasizes her mission to extend these benefits to others, underscoring the foundation of her business.

Throughout her career, Angela has dedicated herself to supporting individuals through transformative experiences. From her roles as a labor and delivery nurse and birth doula to her current work facilitating ketamine therapy, she has consistently pursued her calling. Angela considers it a privilege to create a safe space for individuals navigating profound healing and transformation, hence the name 'Guardian at the Gateway,' symbolizing the journey into the unknown.

While Angela acknowledges that the journey of healing ultimately rests in the hands of the individual, she and her team are committed to providing unwavering support every step of the way. With her extensive training in the psychedelic space, coupled with her nursing background and personal experiences with ketamine treatments, Angela offers a comprehensive approach to care, incorporating education, integration, and treatment.

When not engaged in client support or educating fellow practitioners, Angela enjoys traveling, tending to her garden, caring for her chickens, and spending time with her dogs.

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HOST

Daan Keiman

Daan Keiman, psychedelic and Buddhist chaplain, educator, and Synthesis Content Advisor, has supported people preparing for, moving through and integrating psychedelic experiences for over 15 years in a wide variety of settings - ranging from offering psychedelic harm reduction at festivals and leading group ceremonies at The Synthesis Institute, to his private practice as a Buddhist and psychedelic chaplain. He co-founded the Communitas Collective, a not-for-profit psychedelic think-and-practice tank dedicated to developing, refining and disseminating ethical approaches and best practices to delivering psychedelic care.