Frontier Nursing University (FNU) placed a specific call on nurse practitioners during its National NP Week Virtual Event from Nov. 11-16. FNU educates nurse practitioners and nurse-midwives and prepares them to establish and/or manage a practice including innovative methods of providing primary care services. Through featured virtual sessions, nurse practitioners were urged to raise the standards by being innovator-leaders in their professional and personal lives.
Becoming Innovator-Leaders
Deputy Surgeon General, Rear Admiral (RADM) Sylvia Trent-Adams, PhD, RN, FAAN brought practical ways to add innovation and leadership to nursing practice with her virtual presentation, “Leading From Where You Are: The Role of the Nurse Innovator.”
Trent-Adams advises and supports the Surgeon General regarding operations of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps and in communicating the best available scientific information to advance the health of the nation.
As Deputy Surgeon General, Trent-Adams recognizes the need for nurse practitioners to step into a widening role. “This is important because at this point in time in health care, nurse practitioners have a significant role to play in improving the quality of care, access to care, and producing a much higher quality at a lower cost,” said Trent-Adams.
According to her, it starts with a willingness to lead. Leadership is the ability to inspire or influence others towards a goal. In a healthcare setting, this is manifested by creating a team-centric environment, working towards a specific vision and managing conflict.
Further, nurse practitioners must be innovators. The job is not only to provide excellent care, but also to create new pathways for nursing and the patients that they serve. Innovating practice-based solutions is a key in nursing practice. Identifying a problem or concern and addressing it in a mindful, structured way will empower patients and lead to improved outcomes.
The Nurse Practitioner as Entrepreneur
This requires adopting the spirit of an entrepreneur. “Being able to tell our stories as nurse-engineers, nurse-designers, nurse-advocates gives us a new bandwidth for opportunities to engage into areas of practice where we’ve not been before,” said Trent-Adams. To speak, write and post from a nurse’s perspective is to heighten awareness and create space for change.
“You may not be the CEO, you may not be the dean, you may not be the director, but you are a nurse, and you have something to bring to the table. So lead from where you are,” she said.
View RADM Trent-Adams’s presentation on nurse-innovators here or watch below.
Self-Care is Not Selfish
Eileen T. O’Grady RN, NP, PhD carries Trent-Adams’ concept one step further in her presentation, “Answer the Call to Service: Master the Self.” She urged participants to spend time taking care of themselves and their families.
Dr. Eileen O’Grady is a certified Nurse Practitioner and Wellness Coach who uses an evidence-based approach with people to reverse or entirely prevent disease. She believes deeply that more attention must be paid to getting us unstuck from lifestyles that do not support wellness.
Intentional change is needed to identify and remedy a life that is out of balance. Though health care providers cannot always control the efficiency of their practice or the culture of wellness therein, each can control his or her personal resilience, or “self-leadership.”
Dr. O’Grady’s research focuses on how individuals must define a balance between work, relationships and self. Health professionals, specifically, have difficulty separating the words “selfish” and “self-care.” Individuals that practice self-care are able to provide better care for others.
Growing Wise through Self-Leadership
Worldwide, the top four killers are insufficient exercise, unhealthy food, alcohol abuse and tobacco. “It’s astonishing that so much of what is causing all of these health problems are related to what we’re doing to our own bodies,” she said.
According to Dr. O’Grady, It’s imperative that health providers set workplace and personal boundaries, use a “hell yes” criteria for making decisions, prune away unhealthy friendships and protect their sleep.
Nurse practitioners must “grow wise” instead of old. Positive daily actions create a bedrock for a healthy, prosperous life. Once the bedrock is established, other non-urgent items can be prioritized properly. Growing wise requires a mindset shift, from loving oneself based on people’s approval from loving oneself based on one’s own approval.
When healthcare professionals are already fed and watered with proper self-care and self-leadership, they are more able to focus on their patient’s holistic wellness, providing innovative care, improving outcomes and shifting the landscape of health care one patient at a time.
View Dr. O’Grady’s presentation on mastering the self here or watch below.
Frontier Nursing University is the birthplace of nurse-midwifery and family nursing in America. FNU recently held its fourth annual virtual event in recognition of National Nurse Practitioner Week, Nov. 11-16. See more about FNU’s Family, Women’s Health Care, and Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner programs as well as the Doctor of Nursing Practice program at Frontier.edu.
Carrie Belin is an experienced board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins DNP program, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Georgetown University School of Nursing, and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She has also completed fellowships at Georgetown and the University of California Irvine.
Angie has been a full-scope midwife since 2009. She has experience in various birth settings including home, hospital, and birth centers. She is committed to integrating the midwifery model of care in the US. She completed her master’s degree in nurse-midwifery at Frontier Nursing University (FNU) and her Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves as the midwifery clinical faculty at FNU. Angie is motivated by the desire to improve the quality of healthcare and has led quality improvement projects on skin-to-skin implementation, labor induction, and improving transfer of care practices between hospital and community midwives. In 2017, she created a short film on skin-to-skin called 
Justin C. Daily, BSN, RN, has ten years of experience in nursing. At the start of his nursing career, Justin worked as a floor nurse on the oncology floor at St. Francis. He then spent two years as the Director of Nursing in a small rural Kansas hospital before returning to St. Francis and the oncology unit. He has been in his current position as the Chemo Nurse Educator for the past four years. He earned an Associate in Nurse from Hutchinson Community College and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Bethel College.
Brandy Jackson serves as the Director of Undergraduate Nursing Programs and Assistant Educator at Wichita State University and Co-Director of Access in Nursing. Brandy is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of experience. Before entering academia, Brandy served in Hospital-based leadership and Critical Care Staff nurse roles. Brandy is passionate about equity in nursing education with a focus on individuals with disabilities. Her current research interests include accommodations of nursing students with disabilities in clinical learning environments and breaking down barriers for historically unrepresented individuals to enter the nursing profession. Brandy is also actively engaged in Interprofessional Education development, creating IPE opportunities for faculty and students at Wichita State. Brandy is an active member of Wichita Women for Good and Soroptimist, with the goal to empower women and girls. Brandy is a TeamSTEPPS master trainer. She received the DASIY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty in 2019 at Wichita State University. 
Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine is an Arab-disabled queer woman of color with a PhD in Nursing and an interdisciplinary certificate in Disability Ethics from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Dr. Jamal-Eddine’s doctoral research explored spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Dr. Jamal-Eddine now serves as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in UIC’s Department of Disability and Human Development and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND). During her doctoral program, Sabrina served as a Summer Fellow at a residential National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute at Arizona State University (2023), a summer fellow at Andrew W. Mellon’s National Humanities Without Walls program at University of Michigan (2022), a Summer Research Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (2021), and an Illinois Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) trainee (2019-2020).
Vanessa Cameron works for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nursing Education & Professional Development. She is also attending George Washington University and progressing towards a PhD in Nursing with an emphasis on ableism in nursing. After becoming disabled in April 2021, Vanessa’s worldview and perspective changed, and a recognition of the ableism present within healthcare and within the culture of nursing was apparent. She has been working since that time to provide educational foundations for nurses about disability and ableism, provide support for fellow disabled nursing colleagues, and advocate for the disabled community within healthcare settings to reduce disparities.
Dr. Lucinda Canty is a certified nurse-midwife, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Director of the Seedworks Health Equity in Nursing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Columbia University, a master’s degree from Yale University, specializing in nurse-midwifery, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Canty has provided reproductive health care for over 29 years. Her research interests include the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in reproductive health, promoting diversity in nursing, and eliminating racism in nursing and midwifery.
Dr. Lisa Meeks is a distinguished scholar and leader whose unwavering commitment to inclusivity and excellence has significantly influenced the landscape of health professions education and accessibility. She is the founder and executive director of the DocsWithDisabilities Initiative and holds appointments as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Learning Health Sciences and Family Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Nikia Grayson, DNP, MSN, MPH, MA, CNM, FNP-C, FACNM (she/her) is a trailblazing force in reproductive justice, blending her expertise as a public health activist, anthropologist, and family nurse-midwife to champion the rights and health of underserved communities. Graduating with distinction from Howard University, Nikia holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in public health. Her academic journey also led her to the University of Memphis, where she earned a master’s in medical anthropology, and the University of Tennessee, where she achieved both a master’s in nursing and a doctorate in nursing practice. Complementing her extensive education, she completed a post-master’s certificate in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University.
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. She oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices, and student success. McNair directs AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers and serves as the project director for several AAC&U initiatives, including the development of a TRHT-focused campus climate toolkit. She is the lead author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition).