Play Mari Beth’s Life After Graduation
Video Transcript
Boise State University Adult Gerontology Nurse Practitioner Alumni Testimonials
AGNP Class of 2016, Mari Beth Stein, Nurse Practitioner
My name is Mari Beth Stein, and I graduated in the AGNP program, 2016, I was the first graduating class. And right now I work as a inpatient nurse practitioner for the oncology team at a local hospital. I chose adult gerontology because I was already working in health care with adults and elderly and I did not really have a a drive to take care of pediatrics and I was already in oncology.
I didn’t really want to do anything with OB either and so I thought it was a really great fit, and I also liked that it had a good focus on caring for the elderly. I think that that’s really important because they’re a generation that I think needs healthcare the most and needs focused on.
Overall I think that I had such a great foundation from the different courses that Boise State provided that I felt like I could walk into the role and be as prepared as I was expected to be as a newly graduated nurse practitioner.
It’s scary to go into that role in the beginning. I think that you always walk in and you’re like oh my gosh I hope I don’t hurt anyone and you have to go through all those checks and balances to make sure you’re doing the right thing for each patient, but I feel like Boise State gave me the foundation and the confidence to know that if I didn’t know something then I knew where to find the information and that I could safely take care of people which I think is the most important thing.
If I had advice to give to current AGNP students, my first advice would be to don’t get so overwhelmed with the big picture, to focus on what you’re in right now because really that’s all that matters right then.
And I, the thing that helps- so I had a four month old baby when I started the program, and my husband and I had a two year old. And my husband was really great about being hands on with my kids but I still had to be a mom and be present, and so that work school life balance, I still worked during it as well, and so I did a lot of things at night.
And what I did is I pieced out all of my different, like blog posts and all of my different assignments and I scheduled them and put them on calendars and so I knew that on like Monday night I was going to do a blog post on this subject, and then on Tuesday night I was going to reply to one. And so I tried to break it into pieces so that it didn’t seem overwhelming and take away the ability for me to cope with that as well as being a mom and being a nurse.
Um, I used a prep course for before I took my board, and I think it was the best thing ever I won’t plug which one it is but if you want it after I’m done I’ll let you know um, but I felt like when I was going through the prep course I already had the answers from when I went through our program, so I definitely felt like I was taught the foundations.
And the prep course just helped me zero in so I didn’t feel overwhelmed with all the information on what exactly was the most important of the millions of things that you learned. I would say those are the things that I think helped me the most and that I would want someone, like after me to know.
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