This Nurse Practitioner’s Journey from Clinical Practice to High-Tech

I started my career as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, diagnosing and treating mental health conditions across the lifespan. Today I work in the technology industry as a design researcher and consultant helping define and solve problems facing patients, providers, and the healthcare system as a whole. This article the story of my transition to a non-clinical nurse practitioner career.

My clinical experiences put me up close and personal with the challenges facing the healthcare system today. Wanting to share what I had seen, I began publishing articles on industry blogs, attempting to both define and elucidate these problems while letting my imagination explore potential solutions. I started my own blog to create a space for nurses to access information about solving these issues and to offer their own perspective on new technologies.

Itching to learn more about the healthcare system, I completed a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. I cannot express the value of this program enough. The DNP degree broadened my perspective of healthcare from a patient level to a systems level. DeSales University and the incredible professors taught me the ins and outs of health policy, informatics, healthcare reform, organizational behavior, and health behavior change. This truly catalyzed my new non-clinical career.

Upon graduation, I joined the HIMSS organization, a multi-disciplinary national group of healthcare providers and industry professionals interested in using technology to improve patient care. The HIMSS special interest group for nurses connected me with the Chief Nursing Strategist at Microsoft and the Chief Nursing Officer at IBM. I had no idea that nurses were so involved in high-tech!

Despite my shy and introverted demeanor, I began attending local health innovation “meet ups.” Through networking, I met many (so many) small startup technology companies that were interested in solving a healthcare-related problem. While they had already established a team of engineers, product managers, designers, and salespeople, they still needed medical advisors, a perfect opportunity to start a non-clinical career as a nurse practitioner.

I hesitated when the first startup asked me to join their advisory board. I thought, “What can I possibly offer them?” I also had doubts about taking a non-clinical role. I wondered, “Will I still be a nurse practitioner? What will my colleagues and professors think?” Having just read Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In: Women, Work, & the Will to Lead, I decided to just say yes and figure out the details along the way.

​To continue reading the entire article, check out the new online community for NPs & PAs: Clinician 1. There you’ll find continuing education, patient cases, medical quizzes, job boards, and featured articles like this one from me!