 Okay What's up you guys sit down and welcome back to my channel Thank you guys so much for joining me on this journey if you have not already done So go ahead subscribe like this video like some my other videos See what is on my channel and if you really like what you see join me on this journey This video is going to be a true life series I've done a couple of these true life series before where I talk about being a minority student OBGYN PA and Emergency medicine physician, so there's something for everyone out there and this true life is going to be about being a DMP student This is Avery. He's a DMP student Right in the thick of things and he's going to be talking about his true life as being an NP student So for those of you who are still on the fence PA your NP This is what you want to see But I do want to know just a little bit more about Avery and if you do want to know a little bit more about him as well Please be sure to follow him at all of his social media handles I will leave a link for that and maybe put it on the screen as well But every can you just kind of introduce yourself a little bit tell us about yourself Like what do you like to do apart from NP school? Got it so I work full-time in the emergency department at a children's hospital and When I'm not at work, I enjoy sleep like we talked about before definitely getting as much sleep as I can and just finding ways to Relieve stress of hanging out with friends. I'm pretty active. So I play sports basketball some hiking when the weather is appropriate And and then I listen to audiobooks do a lot of audio. Wow I've recently become a big fan of audio books. So right now I'm working on Michelle Obama's becoming which is really good and a Really really good one is born a crime by Trevor Noah. That's a that's a good one to check out So, okay So you said you like to work out and relieve stress is you know, like you are you is there stress in your life that you need to Okay, definitely between working full-time in the emergency department, which you never know what any day is going to be like to The the daily stresses of being a full-time MP student, you know, you already know about it as well with PA So it's there's a lot of stress involved from papers and deadlines and APA format you guys write APA. Yes, we do The vein of our existence. Yeah, so so there's a lot of stress. So taking time I'm very intentional about my my free time and my me time, you know Just to step away from all those things and take personal time just to relax and enjoy myself Okay, so I mean he's alluded to it But if you have not already seen that video go right now to my channel and type it in it will be medical jeopardy Where Avery and I answer some jeopardy questions later No, like so we you will have to watch and see who won and you know, how well we did on these questions But you can hit that up in my channel search bar at any point in time after you have finished watching this video All right, so without further ado I mean he kind of got into some of it But I want him to get deeper into just his life as an MP student and then just like as a student in general So without further ado here is Avery's true life Nursing wasn't my first choice actually I was started off pre-dent. I chose dentistry because I was interested in becoming a physician or just a doctor working in health care and when I googled top Medical specialties or top health care careers dentistry was number one So I said all right, let me look into this and it was number one for multiple reasons one because of salary of course and two just because of the Lifestyle it allowed you to be at home and it didn't have crazy hours You don't have dentists who are working overnight most in most places So that was one reason why that was attracted to me nursing. I chose nursing because my mother is a nurse She's been a nurse for over 25 years now and she was the one that was encouraging me to go into nursing She said if you wanted to be a dentist or go into medicine later on do nursing first because it's a better like undergraduate major and degree then Biology or chemistry or some of the other sciences that most pre-med and pre-dent students majoring So that's what kind of pushed me into nursing first with my mother who's been a nurse for almost 30 years Some of y'all don't know now in a couple months you gonna find out been blowing up So my particular MP program did not have any requirements for nursing experience. They only required your bachelor's in nursing so your BSN and your RN License so I didn't have any requirements However, there are MP programs across the United States who have different requirements for example one year for Depending on what your specialty what focus you're going into So if you are going into something acute then you probably want one to two years of any type of ICU or just critical care experience before starting your MP program for programs in Anesthesia like CRNA they want two years minimum, but they always say the most competitive applicants have three to four plus years of an ICU experience before even applying but MP specifically for a family nurse practitioner There are a lot of programs that don't have any requirements in terms of nursing experience So because I already started nursing school, I never considered a PA school Especially because I understood that MPs and PAs were there their work was very similar. They worked in a very similar role so PA school was not something that was attractive to me at the time prior to Nursing school. I have considered like all other medical specialties or professions. So I did consider PA. I did consider dentistry I considered even like respiratory and different things, but Once I got into nursing MP was like I had tunnel vision on MP Nurse practitioner Sally's vary like across the United States and it depends on location and experience from what I've researched So I know that most MPs will start at about 85 90 and can go up to 150 170 Close to almost 200 depending on your specialty and years of experience and location of course So, um, I think that a respectable starting salary for a new graduate MP would probably be Right under 100,000 Well, I wish I so I wish I was prepared for um, the the writing and research, um that kind of I mean, I knew that it was something that was going to be like expected of me But I didn't just did a note to what extent so writing and research you really have to familiarize yourself with APA format if you're not so If you want to just brush up on some of those things before getting into a dmp program because Writing and research is what separates the dmp from the ms in in terms of nurse practitioners So that's one thing that I wish that somebody just kind of had more conversations with me about Just to prepare me for the writing and research aspect of the dmp Most challenging parts I would say is just balance So something that I would advise students and anyone who is considering a nurse practice or any graduate degree actually is Really do your research in what you're going to school for and make sure that it's something that you're very interested in because there's going to be days when you're going to be overwhelmed with life And school and you're going to have to be interested enough to just say this is something that I really want And that's what's going to keep you motivated So I think one of my challenges now is just finding motivation to do some of these tedious assignments like discussion posts Where you read an article or the like a few chapters out of the required text You give a response and then on top of that you respond to two of your classmates With using a reference and it's just because and this is just like these small tedious assignments If you're not interested and you're not motivated you will really find yourself in a place of like You know, I don't think I want to do this anymore So one of my challenges with this mp school is finding motivation in some of the classes that are not sciences Some of the things that i'm less interested in like health care finance. These are important classes But you know, they're just not things that you know grab your interest right away So that's one of my challenges is just like constantly remaining focused on the goal of getting the doctorate and becoming this nurse practitioner That's right. I'm coming back like oj like a running back in his old days Right, so I think one thing when it comes to free time I belittled my mp program and I think a lot of us as nurses we because of The options to become an mp where they are hybrid courses where you can do some mostly online and then you just do clinical I think it creates the facade that you can work full time And be involved in a lot of extra things and still go to school at the same time and obtain that degree and I had I have experienced that that is That is very false. That's all I can say. It's just it's very false. I I've struggled to Find balance to go to work three days a week and work the 36 hour minimum And also take two to three classes of a graduate level course. It's it's very difficult So like I said earlier by my free time I I really try to be intentional about the few the little time that I do have to to really Make it purposeful where whether I'm sleeping and not being interrupted or I'm really spending time with people and getting like that social requirement that I need to be to maintain my mental health or if I'm working out just to try to keep my body in shape, but You have even less time when you when you decide to do both Full-time work and work as and and a full-time student So you really need to be intentional about the way that you spend your free time The new opportunities As a nurse now they're Nursing is what makes it so attractive and just special is that There's a specialty for everyone, you know, if you like kids and you do pediatrics If you're interested in the faster pace you work in the er If you like one to two patients, then critical care. I see you is for you If you like working with the adult population, there's geriatrics as an advanced practice rn and Um, as I get ready to get closer to finishing and becoming the mp that I want to be I'm excited for the increased opportunities and the increased responsibility that I have and I know I was working as an mp I will have a little bit more of authority in in health care in terms of furnishing medications and being Instead of being the one who is carrying out the plans. I'm the one that's now creating the plan of care So I'm I'm excited to to just have an increased role where I will be In positions to make a little bit more decisions in terms of the people and patients that I impact So by nature nursing profession has been for years, um dominated by women and in undergrad I was one of three males um in a class I had a small class of about 16 of us so there was three of us male and in my current program right now I I don't know how many of us are totaling mp because we're all taking different courses but in my last class that I was in I was one of Five and there was about 40 students in the room. So nursing when I go to work I'm always like definitely the minority one of one of four. I can always count the male nurses on my hand. So, um I know that a lot of male nurses are going towards, um CRNA school Rather than mp school and if they do go the mp route a lot of them are going into maybe a cute care nurse practitioner From my experience My particular program is it's like almost hybrid so most classes didactic is um Online so research and writing most of it is done online We have things called seminar weeks where we come in for about two to three days depending on the course for some lecture and then Most of the coursework is completed online through canvas Once we get into some of the the sciences Health assessment advanced pathophysiology pharmacology different things like that We will then have more lab settings and More clinical requirements where we would have to come in and do a few hours Clinically my program is also set up where most of it is The front half of it is more lecture and research and writing And the second half is more gets you into clinicals and lab skills and different things like that So and my my program is out of state So my seminar weeks I have to travel to california and spend three to five days there And then come back home to the east coast and there's a lot of programs that work like that Where they are hybrid where most of it is online But then they require you to go to campus for a few days throughout the semester every semester Just to fulfill requirements So there are many mp specialties The most popular one from my experience is the family nurse practitioner It's popular because it provides you with a wide scope. It prepares you to see the newborns all the way to 100 plus So many mps or many nurses are attracted to that program because you may not know exactly What you want to do? What area you you want to work in and this will give you some flexibility to be uncertain So you may want to go into the er and then change your mind and say maybe I want to work in the clinic You can do that or maybe you can just do primary care and You know see patients do checkups and physicals and different things like that So family mp is one of the most popular ones. We also have acute care mp where you work in Mostly icu's you can work some er as well You also have women's health mp, which is something that's really attractive as well There's the midwife as well. These are all certifications that you can get as a nurse practitioner and Psychiatric mental health. That's a really big one one that I believe Has in terms of nurse practice Nurse practitioners they earn the most in especially in california. So psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners I've seen salary starting at 150 160 thousand dollars. So that's one that is very attractive as well apart from nurse practitioners specialties another advanced practice rans Degree in specialty is anesthesia. So nurse anesthetists cRNAs Of course, they are the the biggest highest paid advanced practice rans Nursing is a great profession Because it there's something there's a specialty for everyone if you like pediatrics Then you can work in a children's hospital geriatric the nursing homes. There's geriatric specialty care If you like a faster pace the er is for you if you like to work with patients One to one ratios or one to two ratios and you want to go into critical care. I see you If you don't like the clinical aspect so much that you could be a case manager If you want to do something in administration, there's opportunities there as well if you want to There there's cno's chief nursing officers. So nursing is is there's a variety There's a plethora of different nursing opportunities You can also work in occupational health if you want like a nine to five So there's many different ways So I think that's one of the the main things that makes nursing so special and so unique is that You can be a nurse and work in so many different clinical settings And not clinical settings as well for nurse practitioners One thing that nurse practitioners are facing a struggle that we're that we're facing right now Our challenge for nurse practitioners now is and nurse and nurse practitioner students is the lack of standard in terms of How we're being prepared in school. So there are many nurse practitioner programs that are offered online where You can their advertisements gets your mp within 18 months or 36 months in 24 months And these things look attractive to us sometimes because it's like, oh, you know, that's that's such a short time I'll be an mp. I'll have an increased role. I'll make a little bit more money Um, but one thing that I would just leave with you guys So just a little bit of advice is take responsibility for your learning So although these programs may be attractive You want to research these schools and make sure that they're appearing you to be a proficient provider Because you patient safety comes down is is the most important thing you want to be a safe practitioner And you want to be prepared to be a safe practitioner. So research your schools And take responsibility for your learning find out how clinicals how your clinical placement is organized and Ask questions figure out if and figure out what you want to do So if you want to be an fmp and you want to work in the er Then talk to your school talk to your advisors about getting you hours into the emergency department And also hours in other places so you can be well rounded when you go into When you begin practicing as a practitioner. So that's what I would leave with you guys It's just most importantly take responsibility for your learning and nursing is fun It's there's a specialty for you And i'm excited to begin Thank you so much for doing that. I really appreciate you coming out talking to the subscribers I know they really want to hear like there's a some of them that are really on the fence between pa and mp And so this is giving you some more information on exactly what The different routes you can go to as an mp, which is something that I was familiar with But I didn't know exactly like all of the various specialties and the intricate details that every so Just beautifully pointed out. So thank you for that again If you have not done so go ahead hit every up on all of his different social media We're going to leave that on Probably on the screen or in the description box below so you can go and find those there And also go ahead and hit me up on my social media as well at adana the pa on instagram Subscribe like this video again really really appreciate you. Good luck. Blessings in your program And every said that he's willing to come back and talk to us about uh, how his his life has changed post np school So, you know, we're still doing this Hopefully, um you we can we can look into that. Thank you guys so much for watching. I will talk to you guys next time Bye And sorry, so one thing going back to what you were talking about with what i'm exciting what i'm interested in I couldn't throw this in there. Um One specialty it's not uh mp certification, but as nps you can be uh An r and first assist is what they call and you can assist the surgeons directly So I know many of us are interested in anesthesia and cRNAs and they make so much money and they work in the or But the first assist the r and first assist actually assisted the surgeon and they're right there So that's something that some of you might be interested in Finish off your mp special your mp certification and then look into an r and First assist program. You can also be an r and first assist without Going to mp school. That's something for some of those who don't want to go the mp route