The nurse practitioner field has expanded substantially in the past three decades
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Valerie Meyers, nurse practitioner in adult health at Northern Family Care in Central Square, had been working for a few years as a registered nurse and loved the nursing field. But she “wanted to be able to do a little more to help patients stay healthy,” she said.
That’s when she furthered her education to become a nurse practitioner. This year, she celebrates her 30th year in the profession. Initially, she had begun her education at LeMoyne on a pre-med track.
“I liked the aspect of taking care of the whole person and the hands-on healing to get people better,” she said. “I had really wanted to take care of people. I love math and science. It all fits together with nursing.”
Working as a nurse practitioner has allowed her to broaden her scope of practice in holistic way, caring for the entire person instead. She views doctors and nurse practitioners as working together in a complementary way.
The nurse practitioner field has expanded in the past three decades.
“When I started, you were certified in adult or pediatrics,” Meyers said. “Now it has expanded to acute care, geriatrics and so much more. It standardizes the practice more.”
She enjoys working with her patients and building lasting relationships with them, which is less like the hospital setting, where patient care tends to be more acute.
To perform this type of work, “you’ve got to be a person who will put the patient first and care for people based on their perspective, not yours,” she said. “When you’re taking care of someone, it’s all about them. That can be hard for some people to do. It’s a good field. It’s a good part of the team. It takes a team to take care of people.”
There’s a broad range of what someone can do with an advanced degree: specializing in a type of patient or scope of care, educating the next generation of nurses and working in an institutional setting such as a hospital or long-term care facility.
Selma Mujezinovic, Rochester Regional Health vice president of advanced practice providers, said that many people who end up working as a nurse practitioner start as RNs and then develop the desire to pursue a master’s and doctorate as a nurse practitioner.
“The root of nursing is caring,” Mujezinovic said. “We deliver nursing care in a medical model.”
Although the master’s degree is the minimum requirement, she added that the trend is to go for the doctorate degree.
“There are various ways to get into advanced practice,” Mujezinovic said. “The vast majority have chosen this as a first career. But it’s not impossible to choose it as a second career.”
Nurse practitioner training focuses on population health across the age span but can specialize in areas such as pulmonology through on-the-job training for many of the niches. They support the other providers in a team-based environment, including doctors in hospitals, doctor’s offices and clinics. In some fields such as dermatology, nurse practitioners can perform minor surgical procedures within that area of practice. They can also diagnose acute or chronic conditions, prescribe medication without a supervising physician and perform other therapeutic measures in that area.
Many small practices rely upon nurse practitioners for tasks such as physicals, managing chronic conditions, patient education and counseling and monitoring medication effects.
“If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t be able to meet the needs of as many patients,” Mujezinovic said. “There would be delays in care. We are able to reach the vast majority of patients with high quality, affordable care.”
Salary
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual mean wage for a nurse practitioner in the Syracuse area is $121,660.