A Nurse Practitioner's View

Hi All, Please check out my new blog at  Online Nurse Practitioner Programs ! Also, like this new page on Facebook to automatically get new updates. I am very excited to further expand my blogging and audience in this new forum! Not to worry, I will still continue to regularly update this blog with all things related to nurse practitioner practice. As always, thanks for reading. Stephen

A lot of nurse practitioners are finding my blog through searches regarding opening up a private practice from this January blog post . (I refuse to use the word independent since no clinician practices within a vacuum and requires multidisciplinary support to care for the whole patient). I happen to have a dear friend and colleague,  Dr. Joy Elwell, FNP, DNP , who has her own private practice. I asked her a few questions regarding her experience and she was gracious enough to sit down and answer them for me and my readers.  1. Why did you decide to open your own practice?  Well, first, my experience was a bit unique, since I had my own practice within an institution, i.e. I worked for an institution and was able to see my own patients at that site. I decided to leave and open a free-standing practice in the community because at this point in my career, I believed I could serve the community better by being self-employed. I also believed that I would have greater satisfaction from my

I receive countless spam e-mail messages to my many e-mail addresses. The screenshot of the one that I received below is definitely one of the most bizarre and struck a nerve. Really, this is not a way to advertise a career in nursing. It's unclear to me how or why doctors specifically, are in need of people like me. Perhaps the inference is that doctors tell nurses what to do and nurses are there to serve at their beck and call. We all know that the profession of nursing has a whole science unto itself and that nurses are front line care givers, influencers and advocates in the world of patient care. Sandy Summers is a nurse who runs the The Truth About Nursing website and she dedicates the whole site to correcting the vast negative portrayals of nurses in the media and in entertainment. I can envision her targeting this type of inaccurate portrayal due to the poor choice of wording. I did not click on any of the links for fear of it taking me to some weird phishing site or t