Jesse Breidenbach did a world of research, spending up to 12-hour sessions studying nursing and health care programs, watching endless videos and scanning testimonials, all while he got his prerequisites squared away. Finally, he applied to safety schools, a few colleges in rugby-crazed New Zealand and Australia, and then to “reaches.” Such as, ahem, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
But forget his doggedness, Breidenbach says. More impressive, he figures, is how JHSON found him. “I knew from Day One in orientation that I’d made the right choice. In this program, I am surrounded by unbelievably intelligent, intellectually curious people,” he says. “I mean, I went to Chico State [in California].” It’s a good school but, as Breidenbach explains, there are far more likely places to dig for undiscovered gems. “And I come here, and there’s another person from Chico State! Credit to JHU for this talent identification.”
Its nurturing abilities aren’t bad, either. “My impostor syndrome was as bad as anyone’s,” Breidenbach says of showing up to JHSON with the feeling that maybe they’d gotten the wrong guy. “And then someone from the school walks up to me and says, ‘Hey, we didn’t make a mistake. You belong here.’ … And now here I am, a 41-year-old man crying in a college auditorium.”
That didn’t stop at hello. “They are so invested in you being successful.”
Fate called my bluff.
Breidenbach, a performance coach and personal trainer and a rugby fanatic (and who greatly prefers that we simply call him Jesse), was as good as gone to the University of Auckland in New Zealand. “Auckland is hard to beat as a rugby city,” he explains. “That was a strong pull.” He was ready to hop a plane, unless one of his “reaches” reached out first. “Fate called my bluff.”
Quickly, Jesse was tossed instead into the scrum of nursing clinicals and lectures, and yes, more hours of dogged studying as part of the JHSON’s Outside Track program, which pushes the “clinicals” portion of the program into community and outpatient care sites vs. inpatient hospital units. In his case, the benefits of the JHSON program haven’t stopped there.
“The strength of the program speaks for itself,” Jesse says of access to research faculty and curriculum enhancements designed to deepen clinical, research, and policy expertise. “What an amazing opportunity those are!” he adds, still wowed by his own opportunity to shadow the chief operating officer of Johns Hopkins Hospital. The program’s diversity—in gender as well as ethnicity and previous college experiences—adds to its breadth.
That’s the big idea of the Outside Track: diverse cohorts prepared to think and work as leaders and teammates, ready to take on any role in nursing or fulfill any dream scenario. For Jesse, it has meant “exploring the entire world of health care,” and he’s throwing both arms around every bit of it.
And rugby? Jesse, formerly head coach and owner of Stormer Performance—“providing high performance solutions individualized to our clients and athletes” gets his fix via the Baltimore Flamingos, a local LGBTQ+ team, as well as touch rugby with a group called Charm City Touch.
Jesse doesn’t miss the frustrations of selling himself as a physical fitness guru, though Stormer (his middle name) did some of the heavy lifting there. “It becomes absurd,” he says, pointing to a guy he knew—”a coach to surgeons”—who marketed his program as preparing bodies for peak condition in the operating room. “It’s not. It’s just that surgeons can pay you.” On that note, though he’s worked with billionaires, Jesse doesn’t miss the bottom line either. “The average nurse makes a lot more than the average trainer,” he says.
In fact, there is little specific coaching that Jesse would offer to fellow nurses besides the basic cardio and resistance training that’s good for basically anyone. If anything, he says, “explosive movements like sprinting, or throwing heavy objects [in the gym, of course] can help in those moments that happen by accident during patient care.”