Article: ''An Empathic Ear'' (Sur Maggie)

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An Empathic Ear

By Don Vaughan
October 10, 2005

Compassion, listening skills help nurse win Big Brother

All good nurses know they must develop a sense of compassion and a listening ear if they hope to serve their patients well. Maggie Ausburn, RN, BSN, must have cultivated those skills in her practice. By all accounts, they went far in earning her the $500,000 grand prize on the popular CBS reality series Big Brother 6.

The 27-year-old agency emergency nurse from Las Vegas was one of 14 “houseguests” brought together on the show from around the United States. The eclectic group was completely sequestered for 12 weeks, with their every move monitored by video cameras and microphones placed throughout the Big Brother house.

Each week, a competition was held to select a head of household. That individual picked two others for possible eviction, and a majority vote by the remaining houseguests determined who would leave. By week 12, only Ausburn and a waitress from Miami named Ivette remained.

More than anything, Big Brother is a game of strategy and endurance. Over the course of the game, contestants participate in a series of challenges that test their mental and physical strength, as well as their ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment, including the breakup of close alliances.

In the final episode, the last seven evicted houseguests voted on live television to determine who would win the grand prize. Ausburn won 4-3.

Interestingly, Ausburn did not apply to be a Big Brother contestant — she joined the show via her friend Eric Littman, a Las Vegas firefighter. Their relationship was a secret within the Big Brother house for several weeks, as were other covert relationships between the other 12 houseguests.

A natural part

Ausburn’s game strategy upon entering the house was simply to be her usual honest, gregarious self. “I thought I could go in there and be light-hearted and have a blast,” she says. “My strategy was just to have fun. But as the game progressed, I went into non-talking mode. There were so many competitive people with strong personalities in the house that I realized it wouldn’t work for me to be one of them. So I took a different tack, and that was to just be a good listener.

“I think that has a lot to do with being a good nurse. So much of what nurses do is listen to people and help them work through their problems. That was a very natural part for me to play on the show.”

Ausburn received her nursing degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston.

“I was an EMT for six years prior to becoming a nurse,” Ausburn notes. “I was pre-med initially, and I worked in a hospital as an EMT to put myself through college. During that time, I really admired the nurses I worked with. They made such a big impression on me that I switched my focus from being a doctor to being a nurse.

“I feel I was born to be a nurse. It’s my passion. I absolutely love nursing.”

Ausburn says she’s in her element in the ED. “I love the stress, the high intensity, and the fast pace,” she explains. “And I love the camaraderie that the nurses have for each other in the ER. We’re a family.”

During her three months in the Big Brother house, Ausburn put her nursing expertise to good use. Though a doctor was always on call to handle any physical injuries the houseguests might sustain, Ausburn became the group’s de facto mental health counselor.

“The Big Brother house was like a pressure cooker; it was an extremely emotional place to live,” she notes. “So much of the time, we all needed support; we needed to know that someone cared about us. A lot of times as a nurse you offer emotional care to people, and your heart goes out to every patient. In the Big Brother house, my heart went out to everyone who was having problems. There were a lot of times when emotions in the house ran high. We dealt with a lot of life’s problems while on television, and that was very difficult.

“As a nurse, you work a hard shift, then go home to family and friends who love you. In the Big Brother house, we didn’t have that kind of support base — we only had each other.”

For Ausburn, the most fun aspects of living in the Big Brother house were the various competitions and getting to know her fellow houseguests. “We had so much fun talking about our lives,” she says. “I got to know some really awesome people. That was the most important thing for me — getting to see the real side of people, the side TV didn’t show. These people are wonderful, but the show focused on the dramatics and showed the parts that didn’t really reveal what makes a real person.”

More difficult was getting used to being under the watchful eye of dozens of cameras and microphones, Ausburn notes. In addition to the mikes placed throughout the house, the contestants had to carry a small microphone on their persons at all times so the show could pick up their whispered conversations.

“You tend to forget that you’re carrying a microphone with you all the time,” Ausburn says with a laugh. “I’d go to the bathroom and think no one was listening, then realize I had my mike in there with me. It was a difficult thing to get used to.”


Maggie Ausburn, the 27-year-old emergency nurse from Las Vegas, learned she won Big Brother 6 during the TV show’s Sept. 20 finale. Photo courtesy of CBS.

Lessons learned

While sequestered in the house, Ausburn made a few self-discoveries. Foremost, she learned that she had more self-control than she thought she had. “We were placed in so many situations that could show our worst sides,” she recalls. “I thought I was very hot-tempered, but I really learned how to control my emotions in the house. I hope to carry that sense of maturity with me now that I’m out.”

Though Ausburn played the game strongly, she says she honestly didn’t think she would win. “I thought I was going to be evicted in week three,” she notes. “I didn’t think I would win until they actually told me that I had won. And even then, they had to keep reminding me that I had won because all I could think was, ‘It’s over!’”

The final vote that made Ausburn the winner was one of the closest in Big Brother’s six-season history. The seven previously ousted houseguests who determined the winner discussed at length the positive and negative attributes of Ausburn and Ivette. Some believed Ausburn had played the game brilliantly, while others complained that she had merely coasted through the 12 weeks while letting others in her alliance do her dirty work. But in the end, four of the seven decided that Ausburn had, indeed, played well enough to deserve the grand prize.

“It’s a great feeling when you win something you’ve put so much effort into, but I really feel as if any of us could have been the winner,” Ausburn notes. “When it came down to the final vote, I wanted Ivette to win. We had supported each other and played the entire game together, so I would have been just as happy had she won.”

Though now $500,000 richer, Ausburn says she can’t wait to get back to work. She plans to use some of her prize money to buy gifts for family and friends, including many of her fellow Big Brother houseguests, and invest the rest for her retirement. “I need to look ahead to my future,” she says. “I’ve never had money, so this is going to be a whole new world for me.”

(Source : BBQ / http://www2.nurseweek.com/Articles/print.html?AID=17881 )