In this Mindworks in Conversation episode, nurse leader, executive coach, and healthcare educator Jeannine Acantilado explores the powerful role storytelling plays in healthcare, leadership, and emotional well-being.
Drawing from her experiences in pediatric intensive care, executive coaching, and narrative medicine, Jeannine discusses how clinicians bring deeply personal emotional histories into their work with patients and colleagues.
Jeannine also shares insight into the WE-I emotional intelligence assessment process, which helps healthcare workers recognize their internal emotional patterning, uncover unconscious assumptions, and develop greater self-awareness and emotional agility. Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes that empathy is not simply about feeling for others, but about cultivating curiosity, listening deeply, and resisting the impulse to immediately “fix” emotional pain.
The discussion also focuses on vulnerability, burnout, and storytelling as a healing practice. Jeannine describes how unresolved shame, sadness, and over-responsibility often shape healthcare workers’ identities and contribute to emotional exhaustion. Through programs like Breathe, she uses personal narrative, filmmaking, and reflective workshops to help clinicians process difficult experiences and reconnect with meaning in their work.
Together, Tony and Jeannine explore how narrative practices, improvisation, gratitude, and reflective listening can create stronger relationships, healthier teams, and more compassionate patient care. The conversation presents storytelling not as performance, but as a way of understanding ourselves, transforming difficult experiences, and creating deeper human connection within healthcare.
