We've all been there. You have a patient with an unusual pattern of signs and symptoms, and you wonder if you've missed something. You have a long-term patient that's on everyone's nerves and you'd appreciate input from someone with a fresh perspective. You want to hear from someone in a different place, literally and figuratively. You're having a major disagreement with a physician and need some backup. You want to know the latest standards of care and evidence-based practice. Or you want to chat up stories in the news with a medical angle, and your friends and family either don't get it or have heard enough. Or best of all, you have a great, clever, clean medical joke to share!

That's what your Virtual Break Room here at ADVANCE is all about. Stop by and share in the collective wisdom of nursing colleagues from all over the country and from all different specialties. Home care nurses may have just the right trick for a patient in critical care. Someone in the OR may be able to advise a pediatric nurse. It's all about stopping by, having a virtual beverage, sitting down for a few, and leaving with the satisfaction of helping someone else, with a little peace of mind, a laugh, a new nugget of knowledge, or just the sense of knowing you are not all alone in your struggles.

Whiners need not log on. This is not a place to whine and moan about how miserable you are or why you hate the profession so much. There's plenty of that in bricks and mortar workplaces. This is a place in cyberspace we can create - one about teamwork, support, and solutions.

Pat Carroll’s first paying job in healthcare was in the summer of 1976, when she worked as a respiratory therapy assistant while she was going to school at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse to become a respiratory therapist. Thirty-one years later, she has graduated from nursing school, gotten a bunch more degrees, written 4 books, and worked in critical care, emergency nursing, and home care. After 9/11, she started a healthcare program at the local homeless shelter (as a volunteer) until management changed in 2005 and decided healthcare was not their responsibility. She’s lectured all over the country, from 1983 until she hung up her premiere gold frequent flyer card and all those first-class upgrades after the National Teaching Institute of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses in New Orleans in May 2005 — her 20th anniversary as a speaker there.

Her photo is from the set of her PBS special Hints for Health from a Nurse’s Notebook, which premiered after her first book for consumers — What Nurses Know and Doctors Don’t Have Time to Tell You — was published in June 2004. She’s been on The View a number of times and had a weekly column in the New York Daily News. But Pat found that fame is not all it’s cracked up to be, and she is now a homebody in Connecticut. She is the quality manager for a medium-sized, non-profit home health agency, which includes not only managing and improving quality indicators, but also infection control, clinical consultation, evidence-based practice, and whatever else needs to be done. This summer, she will be precepting Yale University nursing students. Pat believes the beauty of the nursing profession is that, “it gives us a chance to be a positive force in the most critical moments of life and death, while having the flexibility to move into different nursing roles as we grow and change throughout our own lives.” Come, share your break with us.