The Nurse Practitioner Mentor Blog
Learn. Grow. Simplify Your NP Practice.
Weekly blog posts with practical tips, clinical pearls, and real-world guidance for new nurse practitioners in primary care.
Osteoporosis is usually silent until a fracture happens, and by then you've missed the window. The whole job in primary care is knowing who to screen and how to read the result. Here's a no-fluff workflow you can use in clinic.
Who needs screening
Women
- Age 65 and older: screen all women with a DE ...
A blood pressure comes back at 184/118 and the room gets tense. The question isn't the number, it's whether this patient goes home with a med change or straight to the ED. Here's how to tell hypertensive urgency from emergency fast.
Definitions at a glance
Hypertensive urgency
- BP greater than or eq ...
A patient tells you the statin is making their muscles ache and they want to stop it. The job here is to figure out whether this is true statin intolerance or something else, without giving up on lowering their ASCVD risk.
What counts as statin intolerance?
- Definition: the inability to tolerate at ...
Abdominal aortic aneurysms are usually silent until they rupture, and a rupture is almost always catastrophic. The upside is that one ultrasound at the right time can catch it early. As primary care providers, we're in the best spot to do that.
Who should be screened
- Men age 65 to 75 who have ever...
Colorectal cancer screening saves lives, and a lot of it runs through primary care. For most adults, screening begins at age 45 and continues through 75. After that, decisions get individualized.
Who should be screened
- Age 45 to 75: screen everyone.
- Age 76 to 85: individualize based on health, pri ...
It's October, your schedule is full, and half your patients have a reason they'd rather skip the flu shot. The flu vaccine is one you recommend all day, so here's a quick refresher on who needs it, which type to use, and how to talk patients into it.
Who should get the flu vaccine
- Everyone 6 month...
Perimenopause is the stretch of months to years before menopause, when ovarian hormones fluctuate and cycles turn irregular. A lot of these patients will ask you about hormone therapy, and for the right candidate, HRT is safe and very effective for vasomotor and genitourinary symptoms.
The tricky pa...
Perimenopause is finally getting the attention it deserves, and more patients are walking in asking about hormone therapy by name. For the right candidate, HRT is safe and genuinely effective for symptom relief. Here's how I work it up and start it in primary care.
What is perimenopause?
It's the m...
You've got a patient in the borderline-to-intermediate risk zone, and the statin conversation could go either way. A coronary artery calcium test is the tiebreaker that turns "maybe" into a clear decision you and the patient can both stand behind.
What is a CAC test?
It's a noninvasive, low-dose, n...
A patient feels a lump in their neck, or a nodule turns up on a scan you ordered for something else. Most are benign, but you still need a clear path so nothing falls through the cracks.
Here's the workup, simplified for a busy clinic.
Who gets nodules, and why it matters
- Adults: most nodules are ...
