[Note from the editors: Following is a post by a former Real Life in Retail Health blogger about this summer's American Academy of Nurse Practitioners conference. She has left the retail health industry but still wished to share her thoughts on this conference with our blog readers.] I attended all 5 days of the AANP national conference in ...

If you're an NP who owns your own practice, be sure to enter the 2009 ADVANCE for Nurse Practitioners NP Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Do it for Leah Hansen, perhaps the only nurse practitioner with her own practice in Australia. Because her practice isn't in the United States, Hansen isn't eligible for the competition. But you are. Now, ...

Do you have your disaster plan ready?? The avian flu spurred organizations to evaluate their disaster plans and to revise or add provisions in response to a national biohazard or infectious disease disaster. Our county health department has been holding meetings for care providers to assist them in developing individual disaster plans as well as ...

Computers can be a very worthwhile investment. Many day-to-day operations can be managed by this technology. Web sites are a great example of cost effective advertisements that pay for themselves. My web site http://www.urgentcarecenter.us/ introduces the staff, showcases the business, gives directions to our locations, and allows ...

I saw this great patient education video about lost tampons on a blog called Doc Gurley, Posts From an Insane Healthcare System. The blogger appears in the video giving humorous, yet expert, advice about how a tampon can get ''lost'' and what to do about it. Take a look, and then show it to your patients.Self-produced videos aren't difficult to ...

I heard a report on American Public Radio's Marketplace program this morning about the possible future of the ''concierge'' model of medical practice. A concierge practice is a sort of membership health care plan: Basically, patients pay an annual flat fee for comprehensive, on-demand access to their health care provider. The interesting note in ...

Owning your own business comes with many challenges. Including, managing the practice as well as seeing  patients. Although I love seeing patients, I also enjoy spending time managing my own practice. This includes hiring, advertising, determining hours of operations, etc... After practicing for several years now, I have come to really ...

I spent a lot time last week going over submissions to the ADVANCE for Nurse Practitioners Entrepreneur of the Year contest. All the judges' scores are in, and the editorial staff is meeting this afternoon to determine a winner. I'm afraid that meeting will take some time — we had so many exceptional submissions this year. Your private practice ...

I have only anecdotal evidence, but it seems that there are a lot of new NP practices opening out there. In the past few weeks, I've received four Practice Snapshot surveys from NPs who've been in business just since the end of 2007 — two of whom I convinced to help me launch a private practice blog on this site, so stay tuned. I've also already ...

Among the many interesting and motivating tidbits ACNP president Susan Apold shared at the organization's clinical conference was some background on a strategy that organized medicine seems to have adopted toward NPs. Here's a Wikpedia description of the strategy, which is called FUD: Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) is a tactic of rhetoric ...