When Being "Too Sensitive" Became Her Superpower for Transforming Healthcare Culture
From Workplace Trauma to Transforming Healthcare: How One Nurse's Sensitivity Became the Solution
For 25 years at the bedside, Susie Branagan BSN, RN heard the same message: she was too sensitive. Too emotional. Too affected by what she saw and experienced.
Then workplace trauma nearly ended her nursing career. Through that difficult experience she realized that she wasn’t the problem.
The workplace was psychologically unsafe. And that realization launched a mission.
Today, as CEO of Susie Branagan Consulting in Newbury, Massachusetts, Susie is championing psychologically safe healthcare environments through a trauma-informed lens. She's helping entire organizations understand that psychological safety isn't a luxury or a wellness initiative.
It's the foundation upon which all other innovation must be built.
The Problem Killing Compassion
Healthcare's mission is healing, but the workplace cultures are breaking the very people entrusted to provide that care.
Through her own experience of severe workplace trauma as a bedside nurse, she witnessed how psychologically unsafe environments, blame-based cultures, and unsupportive leadership were driving compassionate, skilled nurses to burnout and moral injury. Many are leaving the profession entirely.
"While healthcare organizations invested millions in new technologies, equipment, and clinical protocols, they were failing to address the foundational human need for psychological safety and trauma-informed support," Susie explains.
The existing leadership models treated workplace trauma as an individual weakness rather than a systemic failure. Nurses were left to suffer in silence while being told to be more resilient.
Susie’s strength came from her first hand experiences throughout 25 years across ICU, pediatrics, psychiatry, and medical surgical units. She knew that no one can provide compassionate, innovative patient care from a place of fear, exhaustion, and emotional depletion.
More than Resilience
Susie's lessons for other nurses cut through the noise of wellness initiatives and resilience training:
Your trauma and pain from workplace experiences are not signs of weakness or inability to handle nursing. They are appropriate responses to psychologically unsafe environments that no amount of personal resilience should have to overcome.
It is a lie that you need to be tougher, stronger, or more adaptable to survive toxic workplace cultures. Your sensitivity, empathy, and emotional intelligence aren't liabilities to be suppressed. They're essential strengths that make you an exceptional nurse and human being.
When you feel broken by your workplace, the workplace is what needs fixing, not you.
You can only give from a full cup, and self-care isn't selfish but essential to sustainable nursing practice. Creating boundaries, saying no to unsafe assignments or toxic behaviors, and prioritizing your psychological safety aren't acts of rebellion. They're requirements for longevity in this profession.
You deserve leadership that sees you as a whole person, not just a resource to be deployed. If your workplace consistently depletes rather than supports you, leaving isn't giving up. It's choosing to preserve your compassion and expertise for environments that deserve them.
When Trauma Breaks You Open
Susie's identity as a deeply sensitive person who feels others' emotions intensely fundamentally shaped her approach to nursing innovation. What traditional healthcare viewed as being "too sensitive" became the cornerstone of her trauma-informed methodology.
Growing up in a musical family taught her that harmony requires every voice to be valued and heard. She carried that principle into creating workplace cultures where every team member's contribution matters.
"The shattering experience of my own workplace trauma didn't break me," Susie shares. "It broke me open, revealing that the very emotions I was taught to suppress were actually diagnostic tools for recognizing psychological unsafety in healthcare environments."
That's the shift.
The sensitivity isn't the problem.
It's the solution.
It's the early warning system that something is fundamentally wrong.
Innovation That Honors Humanity
For Susie, being a nurse innovator means transforming the deepest wounds of her nursing journey into healing pathways for others. It means proving that innovation isn't always about new technology or procedures but about revolutionizing how we treat each other as human beings in healthcare.
It means refusing to accept that workplace trauma, burnout, and psychological unsafety are inevitable prices of caring for others.
Instead, she's creating frameworks rooted in Just Culture principles.
· Mistakes become learning opportunities
· Leaders understand the impact of trauma on performance
· Psychological safety is recognized as essential infrastructure
"For me, nursing innovation is deeply personal," Susie says. "It represents my evolution from a traumatized bedside nurse who almost left the profession to someone who now helps entire organizations understand that psychological safety isn't a luxury but the very foundation upon which all other innovation must be built."
She's using her sensitivity as a superpower rather than hiding it. She's showing other nurses that their emotional intelligence and compassion are the exact qualities needed to transform healthcare from the inside out.
And she's living proof that our most painful experiences can become our most powerful contributions. That true innovation happens when we stop asking nurses to be less human and instead create systems that celebrate and protect their humanity.
The Permission You Need
Susie's most important message?
Your experiences, especially the painful ones, aren't meaningless suffering. They're preparation for your next chapter, whether that's becoming the leader you needed, advocating for systemic change, or simply modeling what it looks like to choose yourself in a profession that often demands you don't.
She's now doing what she's meant to be doing, on her own terms and at her own pace. It's giving her more time with her two children and husband while transforming how organizations think about nurse well-being.
And she’s teaching us all that nurses who feel everything, who carry the weight of what they witness, who can't just "toughen up" and ignore the harm? They're not too sensitive for healthcare.
They're exactly sensitive enough to fix it.
