How to Be a Happy and Successful Nurse Practitioner

02/11/25 • 50 min

On episode 506 of The Nurse Keith Show nursing and healthcare career podcast, Keith interviews Dr. Sandra Pagenta, DNP, ANP-BC, the energetic and dynamic host of the Success NP Podcast. In the course of their conversation, Keith and Sandra discuss the many ways in which nurse practitioners can choose to create career paths that fit their skill set, interests, and chosen lifestyle and workstyle.

With a passion for entrepreneurship, personal development, and leadership, Sandra uses her podcast as a space to empower and educate, providing NPs with actionable tips and tools to enhance both their personal and professional lives.

Sandra’s dedication to helping others unlock their potential is at the heart of everything she does. Her Etsy shop is dedicated to creating digital clinical resources for NP students and new NPs, offering NP-specific planners, adorable scrub life portraits, and clinical booklets, with each product being thoughtfully crafted to encourage NPs on their career journey. The Success NP Etsy shop has quickly become a go-to destination for those seeking tools to enhance their clinical practice.

In her free time, Sandra spends time with her family and two children. She is an avid reader and enjoys working out.

Connect with Dr. Sandra Pagenta:

Contact Nurse Keith about holistic career coaching to elevate your nursing and healthcare career at NurseKeith.com. Keith also offers services as a motivational and keynote speaker and freelance nurse writer. You can always find Keith on LinkedIn.

Are you looking for a novel way to empower your career and move forward in life? Keith's wife, Shada McKenzie, is a gifted astrologer and reader of the tarot who combines ancient and modern techniques to provide valuable insights into your motivations, aspirations, and life trajectory, and she offers listeners of The Nurse Keith Show a 10% discount on their first consultation. Contact Shada at TheCircelandtheDot.com or [email protected].

In her free time, Sandra spends time with her family and two children. She is an avid reader and enjoys working out.

Connect with Dr. Sandra Pagenta:

Previous Episode

Reducing Medical Errors and Cultivating Patient Safety

On episode 505 of The Nurse Keith Show nursing and healthcare career podcast, Keith interviews patient safety consultant, author, nurse leader, and educator Dr. Julie Siemers, DNP, MSN, RN. In the course of their conversation, Keith and Dr. Siemers discuss the many ways in which patient safety and outcomes are compromised by breakdowns in communication, provider and nurse fatigue, and misguided and outmoded forms of nursing practice that lead to otherwise preventable errors and patient harm.

Dr. Julie Siemers, DNP, MSN, RN, is the founder of Lifebeat Solutions and the author of the bestselling book "Surviving Your Hospital Stay: A Nurse Educator's Guide to Staying Safe and Living to Tell About It".

Dr. Siemers holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from Touro University, Nevada. She brings more than four decades of experience and expertise in nursing practice, education, and executive leadership to the healthcare arena.

Having spent 15 years in nursing education, Dr. Siemers has served in roles ranging from professor to dean, and as executive director at a large nursing university in California. She has a rich background in direct patient care, with experience in various roles on the medical/surgical care floor, in the Intensive Care Unit, the emergency department, and the trauma resuscitation department at University Medical Center in Las Vegas. Additionally, she served as a flight nurse on a trauma helicopter for 10 years.

Since 2009, Dr. Siemers has been educating students, colleagues, and the broader medical community on the vital skills needed to recognize patient deterioration and ensure safe nursing practices. Now, as a patient safety expert and the founder of Lifebeat Solutions, she is on a mission to make healthcare safer for everyone.

Connect with Dr. Julie Siemers:

DrJulieSiemers.com
Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
LinkedIn
TedX Talk: "How Not to Die in the Hospital"
"Surviving Your Hospital Stay: A Nurse Educator's Guide to Staying Safe and Living to Tell About It" on Amazon
Dr. Siemers' free Hospital Patient Safety Checklist
"A Crisis in Competency: The Strategic and Ethical Imperative to Assessing New Graduate Nurses' Clinical Reasoning" - PubMed

Next Episode

A Deep Dive Into the Specialty of Burn Nursing

On episode 507 of The Nurse Keith Show nursing and healthcare career podcast, Keith interviews Dr. Emily Werthman, PhD, RN, CBRN, a dedicated Certified Burn Registered Nurse (CBRN) and the Patient Care Manager and Burn Program Manager at the Johns Hopkins Burn Center in Baltimore.

In the course of their conversation, Keith and Dr. Werthman discuss the growth of the CBRN credential, the anticipation that the CBRN certification will be nationally accredited and Magnet-accepted in 2025, and the crucial role that nurses play in elevating burn care to new levels of expertise and professionalism. They also discuss the many types of burns that burn nurses may encounter, some of which may not immediately come to mind, but are nonetheless more common than we think.

Burns rank 6th among the ten top preventable injury-related deaths in the United States, with 398,000 people receiving treatment for burns each year. For those nurses who choose to dedicate themselves to this nursing specialty, there is a respected and rigorous certification process and a plethora of possibilities for a fascinating career path as a CBRN.

Emily Werthman, PhD, RN, CBRN is a graduate of the Allegany College nursing program. She also holds a BA in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a BSN and MSN from the University of Notre Dame of Maryland. She has her PhD in nursing from the University of Maryland where her research focused on the relationship between acute burn pain and childhood adversity.

Emily is a member of the board and the Lead Nurse Planner for the American Burn Association where she also holds a national committee appointment to the Nursing and Program Committees. She is a subject matter expert, item writer, and Exam Content Review Committee member for the Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing’s Certified Burn Registered Nurse (CBRN) exam. She is also a member of BCEN’s board of directors. She serves as a special advisor to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)’s burn and blast injury special advisory group.

Recently, Emily was appointed to the Board Program Committee of the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors. Additionally, she holds adjunct faculty positions in the Johns Hopkins, Stevenson University, and Community College of Baltimore County Schools of Nursing. Emily publishes and lectures frequently on burn resuscitation, critical care nursing, and burn pain.

Connect with the CBRN world: