Meet Lori Phinney, a nurse practitioner providing care to patients at a retail-based clinic in Boston. Here’s what she has to say about nursing in retail.

—-

MP3 Audio Podcast

 Facebook

—-

Retail Clinic Nurse Interview Segment:

Jamie Davis:         Lori, welcome to Nursing Notes Live. It’s great to have you on the show.

Lori Phinney:       Thank you, Jamie. It’s great to be here.

Jamie:                   So I always start off by asking the nurses on the show what were their reasons for becoming a nurse? What was your motivation for being a nurse?

Lori:                      I actually have a sort of non-traditional way that I got there. I went to University of Vermont in 1998 as a college freshman convinced that I was going to be an orthodontist. And my pass to dental school is going to start with a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Technology and then I was going to move forward from there. And I got into the classes in Biomedical Tech and I made it through the first semester. And then the second semester kind of started to hit and the math was really intense and math has never been my really, really strong point. So I sort of re-evaluated. At that point, I knew I wanted to be in healthcare and I really knew I was up against three more years at least of intensifying math. And I probably was not going to be able to hang in there. So I had a long talk with my mom and she said, “You know, all three of us are nurses,” all three of her sisters and four girls are nurses and nurse practitioners and, “Why don’t you think about that? That’s something you’re familiar with.” And I kind of wondered why I had never thought about that. I walked right down to the nursing office. Looked at the curriculum. Saw some math, some stitch and sticks and said, “Okay, I think I can hang in there with this.” And I changed my major right there that day and here we are. I literarily can’t believe having my career in nursing over the last 12 or 13 years that I didn’t always want to be a nurse as a little girl. It’s definitely my calling.

Jamie:                   It’s funny you say that because math has never been my strong suit either and I kind of did the same thing. I originally started in journalism and then went to a second career in healthcare and became a nurse. Looking at statistics and some of the pre-calc and things that I had to do, that was about the limit of what I think I wanted to do in math.

Lori:                      Me too. This is perfect. [Laughter]

Jamie:                   It is. So tell us a little bit about your progression from getting your BSN and then moving on to becoming an Advanced Practice Nurse.

Lori:                      So I got my BSN in 2002. I finished that up. And I had a short stint where I worked as a brand new grad near my Charlestown home in Gardner, Massachusetts at a small community hospital. I got an amazing start there. And then I kind of sort of to get the bugs that a lot of my friends are moving to the city and we were getting apartments together and I was spending a lot of weekend time in Boston and I wanted to be a little bit closer to my friends and doing that kind of single thing in the city. So I got an apartment with one of my girlfriends from college, moved to Boston and got a job at St. Elizabeth in Brighton right on the outskirts of Boston on a Med-Surg floor and we had a four-bed Cardio-Thoracic unit. So I really got about a year there as I worked as an RN and that’s where I really got most of my assessment skills and made some great friends and, actually, [I’ll be] in one of these girls’ wedding from th...