Catching Up With: Nurse Practitioner Natalie Eddy

From the Spring 2008 issue of StayHealthy Magazine

Natalie Eddy loves to tell people how she fell in love with nursing first in her role as a critical care nurse and now with her career as a nurse practitioner at Porter's Chesterton Medical Campus.

As the only nurse practitioner at the Chesterton Medical Campus, Mrs. Eddy spends her days interacting one-on-one with her patients who have a host of ailments - from colds and fevers to illnesses that are far more serious.

In each case, Mrs. Eddy blends the expertise, caring and compassion she learned in nurses training with the advanced medicine she was trained for as a nurse practitioner.  Nurse practitioners are registered nurses who seek advanced education and clinical training, providing preventative and acute health-care services to patients of all ages.

Mrs. Eddy says she enjoys her patients as well as her collaboration with other physicians who practice at the Chesterton Medical Campus.

The career of nurse practitioner was established more than 40 years ago.  She believes her experience as an intensive care unit nurse, a flight nurse, nurse intensivist to her current role as a nurse practitioner.  "Once I became an intensive care nurse, I fell in love with nursing," she says.  "And, every year since then, I have found that I love my nursing role even more.  I love interacting with my patients, bringing medicine and nursing together for them."

From her nursing background, Mrs. Eddy brings a strong desire to teach her patients how best to take care of themselves.  From her advanced medical backgrounds, she is prepared to see every ailment imaginable.

She spends most days seeing patients at Chesterton Medical Campus and staffs the After-Hours Clinic one night a week.  "I have my regular patients I take care of and I see other physicians' patients on an as-needed basis," she says.  "I am blessed in that I have the best patients."