In honor of National Nurses Week May 6-12, we take a look at what a day in the life of a nurse practitioner is truly like.

For Michele Kolostian, RN, MSN, GNP-BC, no two days are exactly the same. As with many nurse practitioners, each shift comes with its own unique challenges and rewards. In honor of National Nurses Week, Kolostian graciously took time to speak with us, providing a glimpse of a typical day in the life of a nurse practitioner.

USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work: What is your educational and professional background?

Michele Kolostian: I received my Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from USC in 1994. It was very rigorous, but it was also fun! After I graduated, I was a registered nurse for several years. I then pursued my nurse practitioner degree with a specialty in geriatrics.

USC: Could you tell us about what a nurse practitioner does, exactly, and what inspired you to pursue the nurse practitioner's degree?

MK: A nurse practitioner is a registered nurse with a master’s degree. Back in the 1960s and even through the 1990s, all you needed was a certificate. Now the stakes have been raised — nurse practitioners have a growing list of responsibilities, you need a master’s degree, and for most jobs you need to be board-certified in your specialty. Nurse practitioners can diagnose and treat diseases, prescribe medications, and make referrals to specialists, just to name a few of our day-to-day responsibilities.

I always knew that I wanted a graduate degree. One of my nursing professors, Dorothy Frasier, turned me onto the idea of becoming a nurse practitioner in geriatrics because I really enjoyed the coursework that I did for her as an undergraduate. I knew that I didn’t want to be a bedside nurse forever, I wanted to become a nurse practitioner.

The great thing about being a nurse practitioner is that even though we have many of the same responsibilities as doctors, we still have a solid nursing background to fall back on. Nursing depends on strong interpersonal relationships that help us to better understand the perspective of the patient.

USC: What does your day-to-day work look like?

MK: I’ve been in pretty much every setting you can imagine — clinics, nursing homes, research and academia. I currently work in home health, where we go to people’s homes and perform annual wellness exams. We stay with a patient for about 60-90 minutes to evaluate their medications, run a memory test, do a depression scale, perform a thorough physical exam, collect lab samples, and look at how the patient functions at home. I mostly work with patients who are over 65, but I do have some that are in their 40s and 50s.

Often there’s so much more going on behind-the-scenes at home that isn’t revealed in a typical clinic visit. For example, I’ve gone into some pretty hazardous homes — on one occasion I paid a visit to an elderly patient who had to climb all of these stairs in their home while barely being able to walk.

USC: How are you celebrating National Nurses Week?

MK: Since I’m in home health, I work solo, but my current office sends us a lot of affirmative emails and is very good about sending us presents in the mail. They really acknowledge how special nurses are.

I’ll also do my part for National Nurses Week by offering nursing students a bit of advice: don’t go into this profession for the money. Go into it because you genuinely care about the work you’re doing and the people you’re helping!