A nurse practitioner functional medicine career does not have to mean choosing between a hospital role and your own practice. Many practitioners feel that tension. One NP built both and shares how she made it work.
On Functional Medicine for Real World Impact, host Tracy Harrison talks with Laurie Johnson, NP, a seasoned nurse practitioner who works in a hospital OB-GYN clinic and runs a functional medicine private practice. Laurie served over twenty-one years in the Air Force before building this mosaic of roles. She describes integrating functional medicine into conventional care for insurance-based patients and seeing more complex cases in her private practice when they need more time than a hospital visit allows.
Laurie tells the story of a cancer patient who spent five months in a fixed program before getting to the care she actually needed. She also explains how she opened her functional medicine consulting business one daily step at a time after her family gave her an LLC for Christmas. Her first priorities for postmenopausal muscle and metabolic health round out the conversation.
If you are weighing functional medicine for nurse practitioners as a next step, listen for Laurie's experience with flexibility, fair pay for complex work, and access for patients at every level of need. Her experience offers perspective you can apply to your own clinical decision-making.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 The Entrepreneurial Versus Conventional Care Debate
02:25 Building a Nurse Practitioner Functional Medicine Career
04:48 Air Force Roots and Reaching Insurance Patients
08:26 Why Complex Cases Moved to Consulting
14:12 Functional Medicine Missteps and One-Size-Fits-All Protocols
18:49 Opening an LLC and Building a Business One Step at a Time
24:24 Social Media Discomfort and Thinking Bigger
30:01 Postmenopause Muscle, Sleep, Mindset, and Toxic Thoughts
36:26 Advice for Practitioners Weighing Functional Training
38:22 Patient Wins From Fundamentals and to Hormone Therapy
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