No Time To Care

No Time To Care Keynote Speaker | Cultural Strategist | Author of No Time To Care | Helping
Organizations Strengthen Culture and Human Connection Under Pressure

Using humor, storytelling, and life experiences in his “No Time to Care” presentations and workshops, motivational speaker, Charles Kunkle shares how his “Caregivers First” approach will create and enhance the bedside caregiver engagement essential to improving patient satisfaction and creating a positive patient experience. His series of presentations and workshops offer focused solutions for physicians, leaders, and healthcare providers!

08/09/2026

I should have asked but I didn't because it was either you or me. That was selfish. But what can leaders do to balance the needs of the department and the needs of themselves?

08/01/2026

A medical director once told me my inability to be present in the unit was a sign I wasn't doing my job.

He wasn't in the office to see what my days actually looked like. Budget. Schedule. Emails. The parts of the job that never happen where anyone can see them.

He saw an empty hallway and read it as absence. He never understood what it took to keep it that way.

This is a story about being misjudged, and about the parts of leadership nobody claps for.

Charles Kunkle, MSN, RN, has spent more than thirty years in emergency, ICU, and healthcare leadership. He is the author of No Time to Care, a Silver Medal Book of the Year winner from the American Journal of Nursing.

Follow for more on culture, leadership, and what pressure actually reveals.

notimetocare.com

The first 10 minutes of a shift sets the tone for the next 12 hours.Most leaders know this.Very few protect those 10 min...
07/19/2026

The first 10 minutes of a shift sets the tone for the next 12 hours.

Most leaders know this.

Very few protect those 10 minutes from everything else competing for their attention.

Here are three things I've watched the best leaders do consistently before the day takes over.

They make a physical appearance in the department. Not a walkthrough. Not a glance from the doorway.

They step into the space, make eye contact, and acknowledge people by name. Not because it's on a checklist.
Because it signals to every person on that team:
I am here, and I see you.

They ask one real question.
Not, "How are we doing on staffing?"

They ask something more human.

"How are you holding up after yesterday?"

"Is there anything I need to know before this shift gets moving?"

One question that has nothing to do with metrics.

They keep a promise.

Every leader has something their team is waiting on. An answer. A decision. An email they haven't sent.

The best leaders I've watched handle that thing first, before the shift swallows the day.

Because when you do what you said you would do, consistently and without being reminded, you build something that no pizza party ever could.

Trust.

I knew a leader who used to tell me she never ate lunch.She wore it like a badge of honorAnd looking back I think she wa...
07/17/2026

I knew a leader who used to tell me she never ate lunch.

She wore it like a badge of honor

And looking back I think she wanted
Me to acknowledge this sacrifice as a strength, a leadership characteristic to aspire to.

She left healthcare not long after. She is in pharmaceutical sales now. She told me it was a better “work life balance.”

We stay late. We skip lunch. We miss the important moments in our own lives. And somehow we convince ourselves that this is what makes us good leaders.

At what cost.

Did she leave healthcare because pharmaceutical sales offered something better. Maybe.

Or did she leave because somewhere along the way she forgot that leadership was never supposed to require sacrificing herself.

Maybe the real problem is not that she found something better.

Maybe the real problem is that she stopped believing she deserved better while she was still here.

I want to challenge every healthcare leader reading this to do something uncomfortable.Walk into your next staff meeting...
07/01/2026

I want to challenge every healthcare leader reading this to do something uncomfortable.

Walk into your next staff meeting and say this:

“I know healthcare is constantly changing. Some things will have to be added. But if we’re going to put something new on your plate, let’s also look for something we can take off.”

Watch what happens.

Watch the faces. Because they’ll be waiting for the catch. They’ll be scanning for the fine print.

Because that’s not how healthcare usually works.

Meetings add things.
Emails add things.
Policies add things.
Regulatory updates add things.
New initiatives add things.

Very few leaders spend the same amount of energy asking what no longer needs to exist.

But here’s what I’ve learned after more than thirty years in healthcare.

The people closest to the work already know what isn’t working.

They know which forms duplicate information.
They know which checklist nobody actually uses.
They know which report is generated because of a problem that disappeared years ago.
They know where time is being spent without improving patient care.

They’ve just rarely been asked.

So ask.

Every few months, challenge your team to identify one thing that no longer adds value.

Maybe it gets eliminated.
Maybe it gets simplified.
Maybe it gets automated.
Maybe you discover it has to stay because of a regulatory requirement or a patient safety obligation.

If that’s the case, explain why.

Nothing destroys trust faster than asking for feedback and pretending you never heard it.

But nothing builds trust faster than saying, “I looked into it. Here’s what we can change…and here’s what we can’t.”

The goal isn’t to remove everything.

The goal is to create a culture where people believe their leaders are paying attention to the weight they carry.

I don't know a single nurse who went to nursing school to document.They went to care for people.Somewhere along the way ...
06/29/2026

I don't know a single nurse who went to nursing school to document.

They went to care for people.

Somewhere along the way those two things got reversed.
I have watched nurses work a full twelve hour shift and never once have a real human moment with a patient. Not because they did not want to. Because the system never gave them the space.

They move through the floor like task oriented zombies. Not because they stopped caring. Because caring has been systematically squeezed out of the job description.

Complete the compliance checklist. Fill out the SBAR form. Get to that call light before the one minute goal expires. Document the intervention before the next alert fires. Acknowledge the email from administration about the new documentation requirement that goes live Monday.

Repeat.

There is no line item in the workflow for sitting with someone who is scared. No metric for the two minutes spent holding a hand. No reimbursement code for the nurse who stayed an extra moment because the patient just needed another human being in the room.

The nurses who are leaving are not leaving because the work is hard. Hard work has never scared nurses.

They are leaving because the system keeps pulling them away from the reason the work ever mattered to them in the first place.

And the ones who stay are learning, slowly and painfully, to stop feeling the gap between what they do and what they came here to do.

That is the real crisis in healthcare.

Not the shortage. The disconnection.

I once tried orienting a new nurse leader for three months. About 4 weeks in, my CNO asked me why she was still on orie...
06/21/2026

I once tried orienting a new nurse leader for three months. About 4 weeks in, my CNO asked me why she was still on orientation. I replied "because she is brand new to leadership and I want her to have the best chance to succeed.

I was only given 6 weeks

That question, from the person responsible for our entire nursing leadership pipeline, told me everything I needed to know about how we actually develop leaders in healthcare.

When you were promoted into your first leadership role, how much orientation did you get, if any?

Who taught you how to have a difficult conversation with a staff member you used to be peers with?

Who showed you how to build trust with a team that was not sure they wanted you there?

Who helped you understand the three levels of communication and when to use each one?

For most of us, the honest answer is nobody.

Here is the part of this story I do not usually tell. That new leader I ultimately invested 6 weeks in did not stay. She left before I had the chance to see what she could have become.

I believe part of the reason was that she never stopped feeling unprepared, even with everything we tried to give her.

We talk a lot about the importance of succession planning in healthcare. Committees. Pipelines. Talent reviews. But succession planning means nothing if the orientation underneath it is hollow.

You cannot plan someone's future as a leader if you have not given them a real foundation to stand on today.

If we want to keep the leaders we promote, we have to stop treating the beginning as a formality and start treating it as the investment that makes everything after it possible.

06/14/2026

Part 2 Co-Creating your culture. . The how to is easier than you think.

06/13/2026

When you Co-Create your Culture with team members they then have a say in who they work with as well as the culture they want to work in.

06/09/2026

When a department Co-Creates their Culture expectations they are
More likely to hold others accountable. That is how a foundation is built where people love where they work.

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