Nisa Patel and Vanessa Rodriguez are family nurse practitioners at UCI Health Family Health Center in Anaheim – one of two UCI Federally Qualified Health Centers in Orange County, California. The center provides family healthcare, pediatrics, and obstetrics & gynecology to some of the poorest communities in the county. In addition to running a fulltime clinic, Nisa and Vanessa are faculty of the UCI Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. Their responsibilities for the school include providing nursing education, serving committees, supporting admissions, and participating in several research projects at any given time.
Nisa: Vanessa guided me around when I started at the Anaheim clinic in 2019. She showed me the ropes.
Vanessa: It was really nice to have a fellow nurse practitioner in family medicine. I was the only one when I joined, and the only fulltime NP working alongside the physicians. We got a few more NPs since.
Nisa: I’m from a small town in California. When I first moved to OC, it was a lot of hustle and bustle for me so my husband and I moved a bit outside the county. I have about a one-hour commute. I’ll get up at about 5:30 a.m., walk the dog, have a morning smoothie and off to work.
Vanessa: I get up around 6 a.m., feed my dogs, pack my lunch and get organized. I was born and raised in this area and I live very close. I used to have three dogs but one recently passed away.
Nisa: Once we arrive, we start the craziness! Clinic hours are Monday to Friday, 7:40 a.m. to 4:40 p.m., and we’re always there before and/or after. There’s lots of things coming through all the time: labs coming in, things we need to respond to, phone calls to patients. We’ll have students with us and we work collaboratively with physicians, pharmacists, counselors, a social worker, a nutritionist …trying to make sure that every aspect of our patients’ health that can be taken care of, gets taken care of.
Vanessa: If our patients show up on time we can generally run on time. Not having money for the bus, or gas, or a babysitter – that makes getting to appointments on time difficult for our patients.
Nisa: We’re a well-oiled machine. We’ve worked out how to make our working day a little more efficient.
Vanessa: An appointment is 20 minutes and that’s to address one complaint; in reality, we end up addressing a lot more. You can’t just leave a patient who’s feeling suicidal after a 20-minute slot. In a case like that, luckily we do have our social worker, who’s amazing, but the reality is that 20 minutes often isn’t enough.
Our patients are very complex; some people have multiple diagnoses and 5 or 10 or fifteen medications. They don’t always understand their medications or why they’re taking them. On site we can’t do X-rays or scans or every test we need so there may be four or five places a patient has to go to get those things done. If that doesn’t work out in time for their appointment, it’s frustrating, because it affects patient care. But our staff do the best they can do get all we need for the visits. Our staff is wonderful: we’re a family, and there’s always someone to talk to.
Nisa: Vanessa and I have made it a ritual to get lunch together every day. Although a lot of times we do have meetings during our lunch hour.
Vanessa: I tell Nisa: “If I eat a burger and fries, my patients are going to tell me, ‘You told me to eat healthy!’” The population we serve are people I grew up around and they see me all the time. It helps to build more of an intimate relationship with them.
Nisa: We’re headed back to school to get our doctorate – we’re hoping to do DNPs at UCSF with a focus on community health. I think it will allow us to be a little more on the academic side of nursing education. Essentially, the training we do at the clinic is ensuring our students are capable providers. And we’re involved in several research projects.
Vanessa: We’ve been approached to present a poster at the American Diabetes Association Conference this year about our work on distance glucose monitoring.
Nisa: This is a part of CAREPILLS, an interdisciplinary program where we collaborate with the pharmacist to support patients with chronic diseases to maximize medication management and glucose control. That program is showing real world outcomes: we’ve seen great improvements. We’re meeting quality metrics that mean the government funds us to keep serving these patients.
When we get home, our goal is to disconnect. We’re so used to just doing clinic things all the time – like what we call “pajama charting,” getting our charting finished at night with the TV on. We’re trying to do less of that. In the evening, my husband and I try and get a workout or a walk in.
Vanessa: For my sanity, I do aerial silks, hiking, camping, and pole.
Nisa: One of the things Vanessa and I talk about a lot is how it’s important to work on our own mental health.
Vanessa: We both have a really nice home life and a really good support system. As long as I make some kind of change in the world, I’m okay with it. I love my job and I love my patients.
Nisa: I would absolutely agree with everything Vanessa has said. Nursing is about being caring, and I think every family should have a nurse in their household.
