SCOPE OF PRACTICE
From Nurse Practitioner to Medical Student : Pearls for Collaborative Practice
MSN graduation , University of Cincinnati in December 2013 . UofL School of Medicine White Coat Ceremony , July 2023 .
I took the scenic route to medical school . I obtained a Bachelor of Science in Nursing ( BSN ) from Bellarmine University in May 2008 and a Master of Science in Nursing ( MSN ) from the University of Cincinnati in December 2013 . My nursing background was primarily in the operating room with a couple of years on the open-heart operating room specialty team at a local hospital . After roughly four years of working as a registered nurse in the operating room , I realized that I did not want to work in that capacity for the duration of my career .
I began to explore my options and found myself at a crossroads . Should I pursue medicine or continue down the nursing education path to become a nurse practitioner ? Considering where I was in my life at the time , I decided to pursue the Women ’ s Health Nurse Practitioner ( WHNP ) Program at the University of Cincinnati . I was fortunate to complete my clinical rotation hours with phenomenal preceptors in Louisville and Southern Indiana
by CHELSAE NUGENT , M2 which led me to my first job as a nurse practitioner .
I worked as a nurse practitioner for just under nine years at a private practice in Southern Indiana . I began as a clinic-based nurse practitioner . I would conduct patient visits with a variety of problems to be addressed ; from a patient wanting to initiate contraception , to a patient requiring a work-up for recurrent pregnancy loss . The variety of concerns that would bring patients into the office and require “ detective work ” on some level was something that I loved . After a couple of years , my role within the practice evolved . I began to add more procedural types of patient visits to my schedule , such as endometrial biopsies and colposcopies . For the latter half of my time with the practice , I combined clinic duties with assisting in the operating room . In the mornings I assisted in the operating room with major gynecologic cases , such as hysterectomies , followed by a full schedule of patients in the afternoon . When I was not assisting with gynecologic cases or in clinic seeing patients , I assisted with cesarean sections . I was tremendously fortunate to work beside supportive physicians who genuinely enjoyed teaching and
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