For Lauren Beavers, it was love at first sight. She remembers the day at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, when, as a nursing student, her career choice became crystal clear.
“One day they let us go into the pre-natal care clinic and I followed a nurse practitioner around all day doing pre-natal care, and it was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’ I really fell in love with obstetrics and women’s health,” she said.
It was all she wanted to do, and virtually all she has done since then. After earning her undergraduate degree in 2001, Beavers started work as a nurse in a post-partum unit and newborn nursery in Chattanooga, an experience she recalls as “awesome.”
Since 2008, she has been a nurse practitioner at McDonald Murrmann Women’s Clinic.
A Memphis native and graduate of Germantown High School, Beavers said she “knew at a young age that a career in healthcare was my calling. But I wasn’t exactly sure which direction to go with that.”
But a seminar at UT during her freshman year got her interested in nursing, and then the trip later to the pre-natal care clinic narrowed her focus to women’s health.
She followed her husband-to-be, Brent, to Chattanooga, where he had found work as a pharmaceutical rep before he eventually switched careers to law enforcement.
Her job in Chattanooga was “a great first job,” she said, but after a couple of years she started commuting back to UT and earned her master’s in nursing in 2005.
“I knew in the long term as I started a family I wanted to be more clinic-based,” she said, “and I knew I wanted to get back and get my nurse practitioner certification.”
In 2008, Brent landed a job with the federal government in Memphis, and for Lauren that meant a move back home. Within a few weeks, she was hired by McDonald Murrmann.
“I was blessed to get that position straight off,” she said. “I’m just fortunate to work with such a highly respected group of physicians. We’re pretty unique because it’s an all-women practice. We have seven physicians and three nurse practitioners, all female, serving the needs of women.”
Initially full-time, Beavers now works part-time, allowing her more time to spend raising their daughters, ages 3 and 5. When the girls are older, she plans to return to school and work toward a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree.
“The direction for nurse practitioners is changing,” she said. “In the not too distant future, the goal will be for all nurse practitioners to be educated on the doctorate level and have a DNP. But right now I’m in a phase of my life where balancing motherhood and work is the ultimate challenge.”
The issue of how much autonomy nurse practitioners are given is important to Beavers, but maybe not as important as it is for some other NPs. She said her position is different because she’s in women’s health.
“For example, I see pregnant patients, but I don’t deliver them,” she said. “So when a problem arises and delivery is necessary, I can’t accomplish that goal. As a women’s health nurse practitioner, would I ever have a need to have full-practice authority? Because I can’t do everything the physician can do.
“Now, someone in primary care who’s doing screening and wellness exams, treating high cholesterol and doing that sort of thing, I can see that for them. But perhaps that’s why I’m not too vocal one way or the other because it doesn’t affect my practice as much as it does others.”
In her field, there’s a certain comfort in having a physician around, almost as a safety net.
“I like being able to work in collaboration with a physician,” she said. “I think a lot of nurse practitioners are wanting to open their own clinic and run their own practice without having a physician involved. But I like the role that I serve where I’m an extension of the physician and the physician is always right there for situations that are a little bit outside my scope.
“The nurse practitioners’ association (American Association of Nurse Practitioners) is encouraging nurse practitioners to contact their legislators to push for full-practice authority. I’m not really one of those out-there vocal nurse practitioners lobbying. Honestly, I’m just trying to make sure the kids get their lunches packed and get out the door on time.”
Although Beavers has never wavered in her love for nursing, her perspective changed after she had her own children.
“Becoming a mother has definitely impacted my practice because you just don’t fully understand the experience of becoming a mother until you have. It’s given me a lot of empathy with the patients.”
At McDonald Murrmann, her duties include pre-natal care, well-woman checkups, STD screening, breast exams, IUD insertions and certain biopsies. In that respect, she said, she functions quite the way a physician does.
“One of the great things about being a nurse practitioner is that my schedule tends to be more flexible,” she said. “I’m telling you, our practice is very busy. Our physicians are highly sought-after, and sometimes getting an appointment may take a day or two. Which is not really that long, but for women who have something going on, we tend to want to be seen right away.
“So the nurse practitioner tends to have the quickest appointments. It’s nice to be able to feel like you’re ‘coming to the rescue’ because women are usually very, very grateful that you’re there and able to see them so quickly.”
RELATED LINKS:
