Nurses building a Business of Hope ft. Matt Harless & Ashley Chancellor on Nurse Rosa's INsights

What happens when burnout breaks you open, and you decide to build something from the wreckage?

In this episode, Rosa sits down with Ashley Chancellor and Matthew Harless, co-founders of The Business of Hope, to explore why burnout in healthcare goes far deeper than exhaustion, and what hope, as a functional tool, can actually do for clinicians on the front lines.

Ashley Chancellor, RN spent 14 years as a nurse, much of it traveling the country as an ICU nurse. A fractured spine and severe PTSD during COVID took her off the floor indefinitely. What came next was a memoir, a coaching practice, and a mission: reminding the helpers of the world that they are worthy of the same compassion they give.

Matthew Harless, RN brings over twenty years of clinical experience across psychiatric care, emergency medicine, rehabilitation, and hospital leadership. He's the creator of the Harless Method and the Hope Assessment, tools designed to help burned-out clinicians measure where their hope actually stands and start moving toward recovery instead of self-blame.

Together, they're making the case that hope isn't a soft skill or a poster slogan. It's infrastructure. And it can be measured, built, and protected.

In this conversation, Rosa, Ashley, and Matt dig into the real difference between burnout and moral injury, walk through the Hope Assessment live on air, talk about what it looks like to use hope-informed care in real clinical settings, and ask the hard question: what would it actually take to fix this?

Resources mentioned in this episode:

hopeassessment.org
ashleymchancellor.com
mattharless.com
nursesshiftchange.org
Just a Nurse by Ashley Chancellor
Medicine Under the Mango Tree by Ashley Chancellor (upcoming)
Transition to Care by Matthew Harless
Ashley on TikTok and Instagram: @justanurse_rn
Rosa on all socials: @nurserosaspeaks