Kristina M. McGahan

Registered Nurse · Magnolia, Texas

Kristina M.
McGahanRN, BSN

  • Cardiac & Telemetry
  • Nurse Consultant
  • Recovery Coach
  • Author

Twenty-eight years on cardiac and telemetry floors. Now she teaches other nurses to read the monitor before it starts screaming.

The book Recovery work
Kristina M. McGahan in navy scrubs with a teal stethoscope, photographed against a limestone wall.

Kristina M. McGahan, RN, BSNPinnacle Lifetime Member, The Inner Circle

  1. 28+Years in nursing
  2. 1998BSN, UTHealth Houston
  3. 4Active certifications
  4. 2Nurse of the Year awards
A bank of cardiac telemetry monitors in a dim hospital unit at night, waveforms running across every screen.
Somewhere on this wall, one trace is about to change.Cardiac telemetry, night shift

One beat, up close

Most of what goes wrong
shows up here first.

A normal sinus rhythm A telemetry waveform showing, in order, the P wave, the QRS complex and the T wave of a single normal heartbeat, drawn over standard ECG graph paper. P QRS T
P The top chambers fire. A small bump, easy to skip. QRS The ventricles squeeze. This is the beat you can feel at the wrist. T The ventricles reset. Electrolyte trouble bends this wave early.

Most nurses learn rhythms in one class and labs in another, then never put the two side by side. That gap is where Kristina teaches. Match the potassium to the T wave and the magnesium to the QT, and a borderline result stops being a number on a screen. It becomes a warning with a clock on it.

A printed ECG rhythm strip held flat on a desk under a lamp, a pen resting across it.
Kristina M. McGahan photographed outdoors in a sage-green top, smiling, with a live oak behind her.

The practice

The long version runs
twenty-eight years.
The short version
is cardiac.

Kristina M. McGahan has been a nurse since 1998. Today she works as a nurse consultant, a burnout recovery coach, and the clinical nurse coordinator for a cardiac care unit. The last of those keeps her on the floor.

Cardiac and telemetry is the core of it, with progressive care, medical‑surgical and cardiovascular services around the edges. Somewhere in those twenty-eight years she also became the person hospitals hand their new nurses to. She has precepted, taught, written orientation programs and led.

The consulting work runs alongside it: coordinating complex care, building teams, straightening out workflow, and keeping units on the right side of The Joint Commission, OSHA and AHCA.

  • Cardiac & telemetry
  • Progressive care
  • Medical‑surgical
  • Cardiovascular services
  • Stroke care
  • Post‑acute & intermediate
  • Wound, ostomy & continence
  • Preceptor & educator
  • Regulatory compliance
Two nurses at a telemetry station, seen from behind, one pointing at a waveform on screen while the other holds a printed strip.
Twenty-eight years of this is twenty-eight years of showing somebody else.Preceptor and educator

Mind Over Matter: Nursing Recovery Summit

She built this
because she burned out first.

Kristina founded the Mind Over Matter: Nursing Recovery Summit after her own run at professional burnout. It is a coaching program, not a conference. It addresses burnout and emotional exhaustion through nervous-system-based work, for nurses carrying stress and trauma they have had nowhere to put.

She is NLP certified and a certified life coach as well as an RN, which is the part that matters here: she is not a therapist and does not present herself as one. She coaches nurses across the country through this work now, and intends to widen it.

A nurse in scrubs walking away down an empty hospital corridor at night under fluorescent light.
The walk back to the station, somewhere past two in the morning.
  • Burnout recovery coachingFor the nurse who is still clocking in and no longer sure why.
  • Nursing educationTelemetry and cardiovascular teaching, pitched at the bedside rather than the lecture hall.
  • ConsultingClinical care, leadership, and how a unit actually runs.
Write to her about this

There is no booking form and no published price list. Say what is going on and she will tell you what the work looks like.

Cover of What Every Nurse Must See Before a Code: Telemetry Secrets by Kristina Michelle, BSN, RN.

Paperback, 111 pages, September 2025

What Every Nurse
Must See Before a Code:
Telemetry Secrets

Written for the nurse who has the monitor, the labs and no time. It covers what to look for before a patient codes, and how to chart it so the note still holds up months later.

  • Rhythm strips and case studiesReal strips, worked through the way you would at the bedside.
  • Flowcharts and escalation templatesWhat to do next, and who to call, before it becomes a code.
  • Documentation guidanceCharting that survives being read back to you a year later.
  • Electrolytes, AV blocks, early declineThe changes that show on the monitor before they show in the patient.

For new graduates, for nurses who have been doing this twenty years, and for the educators teaching both.

Prices are live on Amazon, where the purchase completes. Independently published under the author name Kristina Michelle, BSN, RN.

From the nurses who read it

A small group of nurses in scrubs around a table while a colleague draws an ECG waveform on a whiteboard.

“Finally, someone gets it. This isn’t another dry ECG manual. Kristina connects the dots between labs and rhythms in a way that actually sticks.”

Michelle R.Cardiac RN

“The magnesium chapter changed my practice. I never realized how often low Mg makes K+ replacements useless. Now I demand both get checked together.”

Carlos M.ED RN

“The legal chapters hit home. I used to chart ‘MD aware’ like everyone else. Now I write exact times, what I said in SBAR, and orders received.”

Michael H.Night shift charge nurse

“As a newbie, I’d panic over every weird rhythm. This book taught me to ask ‘What’s the story?’ instead of just memorizing strips.”

Kate W.New grad, med-surg telemetry

“I’m buying copies for my whole orientation group. The ‘Thinking Nurse’ chapter is what new grads actually need, not more task lists.”

Sarah J.Clinic nurse educator

Reader responses as published by the author.

The record

Twenty-eight years, on paper.

  1. 1998 Bachelor of Science in Nursing The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  2. 2021 Nurse of the Year Christus Santa Rosa Hospital
  3. 2022 Nurse of the Year Christus Santa Rosa Hospital, twice running
  4. 2025 Woman of Empowerment Award For the recovery work
  5. Sept 2025 Telemetry Secrets published What Every Nurse Must See Before a Code
  6. Now Pinnacle Lifetime Member The Inner Circle

Licence and certifications

  • Registered Nurse
  • BSN
  • LNC
  • ACLS
  • BLS
  • NIH Stroke Scale
  • NLP certified
  • Certified life coach

Mentors

Natalie Jordy, RN and Jana England. She credits both with the guidance that shaped how she leads and how she teaches.

What she is working toward

Safer patients, and nurses still standing at the end of the shift that got them there.

Paraphrased from her Inner Circle feature

Get in touch

Ask her something.
Clinical, professional
or personal.

This opens your own mail app with her address already in it.