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
Dr. Cecelia Hammond has many years of experience as a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) and has been an American Nurses Credentialing Center certified FNP since 2008. Her FNP background includes working several years in a community clinic caring for patients across the lifespan. She has been in a faculty role for the past 14 years teaching within nursing undergraduate and family nurse practitioner graduate programs.
With a distinguished and sustained record of online teaching, scholarship and service, Dr. Hammond has developed nursing curricula and taught online advanced nursing courses for many years. She has a passion for teaching graduate nursing courses and especially enjoys teaching the core primary care FNP courses and nursing theory, health assessment and pharmacology.
Dr. Hammond obtained her Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) in 2010. Her content areas of expertise are adult and geriatric health, pharmacology, advanced practice nursing, leadership, chronic disease and medication management, evidence-based practice and primary care. Dr. Hammond joined the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences as a contributing faculty member in January 2020 and became a core faculty member in May 2021.
