Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are advanced healthcare practitioners with similar responsibilities, such as diagnosing illnesses and prescribing medications. However, their training and paths toward certification differ in significant ways. This blog post unpacks the key differences between NPs and PAs to help you determine which career path best aligns with your goals. What Is a Nurse Practitioner? A nurse practitioner (NP) is a licensed clinician who provides comprehensive healthcare to patients of all ages. An NP can work in virtually any healthcare setting, diagnosing patient conditions and prescribing medications. As of October 2022, nurse practitioners have full practice authority in 27 states, meaning that they can practice Read more
Susan Waugh
Vice President, Human Resources
Susan Waugh, Vice President of Human Resources, has more than 20 years of professional experience as a leader in human resources, with strong functional expertise in talent acquisition, operational efficiency, organizational design, training and development. She excels at delivering HR practices that create strategic value and focus on improved work processes and employee engagement, and that deliver a purposeful impact to drive business performance improvements.
Prior to joining the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, Waugh worked for Laureate Education, Inc. for more than 10 years, where she served as the Executive Director of Global Talent Acquisition and later as the Executive Director of Human Resources for Laureate Design Universities. In this capacity, she led a globally dispersed human resources team that aligned the HR and business strategy across multiple institutions in the Laureate network. She instilled a strong sense of community within her international and U.S. teams by encouraging and leading them to find creative and collaborative solutions for their individual and shared HR-related initiatives.
Prior to joining Laureate, Waugh served in HR and leadership roles for companies in the automotive and management consulting industries with clients in the financial services, government, manufacturing, telecommunications, technology and transportation sectors. She is an active member of Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM) and demonstrated her commitment to civic duty through her work on behalf of the Baltimore City Public School system as the former chair of the PENCIL committee and efforts within her local community. Waugh holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Mary Washington.
