Strangers seek out Linda Schultz at healthcare conferences across the country, eager to say hello and give thanks, their greetings tinged with a hint of awe: “You’re the nurse!”
To these admirers, Schultz isn’t just any nurse, she’s “Nurse Linda,” the Reeve Foundation's in-house expert and a trusted source for many people living with spinal cord injuries. Since 2014, Schultz has fielded hundreds of questions from people around the world through her weekly blogs and live chats and monthly webinars, creating a space where community members can find support.
Drawing on more than 30-years of experience in rehabilitative nursing and a PhD in research, Schultz tackles subjects ranging from neuropathic pain and autonomic dysreflexia to how to stretch catheterization out overnight to get the best sleep. A reader once told Schultz that her blogs, especially on bowel and bladder management, offered “the most bang for the buck.”
“She said, ‘Linda, you’re just so graphic, but after I read it, I knew exactly what to do,’” Schultz says.
Providing such clarity for the community is exactly the point.
“Nursing is all about teaching,” Schultz says. “You take the information you’ve gained and teach people how to take their pills, how to follow the right diet, how to take care of their health. With spinal cord injuries, it can feel like a whole other language. I’m fortunate enough to be able to help translate that for people.”
As “Nurse Linda,” Schultz cultivates conversations, not lectures, encouraging readers to not only ask her anything, but share their own advice and hacks alongside hers. Writing about the coronavirus in March, Schultz offered early and detailed preventative tips for those with spinal cord injuries, including wiping down wheelchair rims and not using mouths to assist with activities while outside the home; the blog received more than 24,000 views.
Her questions come from a wide spectrum of readers, including newly injured individuals, aging seniors, and family members, friends and caregivers seeking guidance.
Schultz works hard to ditch the medical “mumbo jumbo,” but doesn’t dumb things down; her answers are stacked with evidence-based research, clearly explained and easily understood. The end goal, she says, is to provide information that helps people living with spinal cord injuries and their families create the best possible lives.