How to Become a Nurse Practitioner in the US

Invited to Become a Nurse Practitioner, a Life of Excitement Sarah and her family moved to Los Angeles from King City. Knowing she was not fluent in English, her first employment opportunity as a nurse was with a Korean American owned nursing home. She discovered soon enough that general hospitals did not recruit registered nurses who are new graduates. Because she worked at a facility operated by a Korean American, her compensation was lower than a nurse working at a general hospital. Henceforth, Sarah made the decision to further pursue her academic studies as she started an RN to BSN program at Azusa Pacific University in 2012. Afterwards, she enrolled in a Master of Science in Nursing and Post-Master’s Certificate Program also at Azusa Pacific University. In summary, Sarah started nursing in 2008, graduated from Hartnell college in 2010, transitioned in 2013 to a RN to BSN program, and completed her Master’s and Nurse Practitioner Program in 2016. Apart from the 6-month leave of absence for the birth of Sarah’s second child, she went to school for nursing for 8 years. If you consider the prerequisite courses she took, Sarah was in school for around 10 years; thus, she began working as a full-time nurse in 2010. Sarah started practicing as a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner in 2016, where she primarily prescribed medications and rounded with patients in psychiatric wards and nursing hospitals. She was highly collaborative in her practice, engaging in the development of treatment and discharge plans with the healthcare team of the hospitals. While seeing patients, Sarah realized that Korean Americans in Los Angeles and in California had little resources for psychiatric consultations and tended to keep their mental disorders to themselves. Sadly, these psychiatric patients often missed early treatment opportunities since they did not personally admit that a psychiatric disorder existed. Sarah’s vision was driven with a passion to provide access to care for professional treatment to local residents, particularly Korean Americans, so they can live with a favorable and stable mental state of mind. With that passion, she fulfilled her vision by establishing her own psychiatric clinic, Together Mental Health Clinic on Jan. 3, 2019, amid her third year practicing as Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. “Together” was included in the name of the clinic with the promise to provide and grow a happy and joyful treatment regimen not just for patients and residents, but also for Sarah’s fellow colleagues and staff members. Entering the world of entrepreneurship as a Nurse Practitioner at age 40 was quite an endeavor. With no experience in operating a business, Sarah incurred losses due to managerial errors and judgements. There being no precedent or model, where a Nurse Practitioner opened a psychiatric clinic, Sarah had to be creative and resilient in developing her very own Nurse Practitioner clinic. Fortunately for Sarah, there was no competition for Nurse Practitioner operated clinics. More importantly for Sarah, she had the autonomy of making executive decisions without going through the bureaucracy and politics of a more complex organization. Regardless of the size or number of patient visits to Together Mental Health Clinic, Sarah took a courageous leap of faith in establishing a clinic as a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner as it entered its fourth year. Sarah has set the bar in initiating her own clinic by providing an entrepreneurial and groundbreaking option for her Nurse Practitioner colleagues. Although excited and ecstatic, in her own humble way, Sarah realizes there is still so much potential, which makes her tentative, but nevertheless, optimistic in her professional growth.