How Does a Nurse Practitioner Spend a Workday?
Off and running
A nurse practitioner's day usually begins when the practice she works for opens up. Typically this is around 8:00 a.m. The first order of the day is to check for messages, both written and voice mail, and to check for email as well.
Once that has been taken care of, the nurse practitioner will then check the labs that she was presented with the previous day. At this point, she will write lab letters to the patients, which will contain instructions.
The nurse practitioner will then see the first patient of the day and will continue to see new patients approximately every 30 to 45 minutes. Once the patient is called back to the examining room, the nurse practitioner will get the patient's history, including family, medical and surgical history. She will then ask the patient about her symptoms and give the patient a complete physical exam. During this time the practitioner will address any chronic or new symptoms and write or refill any prescriptions that the patient needs.
After the prescriptions are written, the practitioner must educate the patient about the disease process, what the prescriptions will treat and how they should be used. The nurse practitioner will also question the patient as to what preventative care has been taken, such as colonoscopy, pap smear, bone density or mammogram.
The practitioner must then put in a request for records release so that she can review the patient's prior records. Once all of this is done, the nurse will then ask the patient if there are any other concerns that she needs to address. If there are, then they are addressed. If not, the patient is released and finished with her examination.
The examination process continues throughout the morning.
Break time
Once the nurse practitioner is finished examining the morning round of patients, he will return to his office and check messages, write referrals, do paperwork, review records and return patients' calls in an effort to answer any questions they might have. After this has all been accomplished, the nurse is then free to go to lunch, which is around noon, or later, depending on nurse coverage.
Most of the time, a nurse will only take half of his lunch break to actually eat lunch, which is about half an hour. The other half hour is used to finish up paperwork that was not finished during the morning examination time.
Round two
When lunch is over, the nurse will return to the office and start the process all over again. Patients will be seen throughout the day, until closing time. Usually, a nurse practitioner will examine patients that range from geriatric to pediatric, in addition to emergencies that are deemed minor.
Around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m., the nurse will call her collaborating doctor to discuss the events of the day, to include any difficult or unusual cases. This is also the time that the nurse will return any phone calls from other doctors or patients. If any have been received, she will also read through the consultation notes.
The last order of the day is to talk to the intake nurse and discuss the day's cases. This offers the nurse and nurse practitioner time to swap ideas and address any concerns that may have arisen during the course of the day.
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