EP 26: CE, Certification & Career Ladder

Want to work your way up the ranks of your NP career strategically? We're here to help. In this episode, we talk about how to get out of a procrastination rut, stay motivated to complete CE in a timely fashion, and explore new certifications that can help you become a well-rounded candidate. Learn tips and tricks for using education hours to satisfy continuing education requirements, and get briefed on the newest guidelines outlined by AANP. 

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Transcript

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Voiceover 0:01

Welcome to NP Launchpad, presented by Fitzgerald Health Education Associates, the podcast created for newly graduated nurse practitioners navigating the transition from school to clinical practice. Hosts Jason Gleason, Christopher Gleason, and Vanessa Pomerico- De nino deliver real talk, real experiences, and practical guidance to help you succeed from day one. So if you're ready, let's jump right in.

Christopher Gleason 0:34

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to NP Launchpad. I'm here with my co-hosts Jason and Vanessa. This week we're going to be discussing CEs. We're going to be discussing climbing that career ladder and the process for certification. So for MailDrop, if you want to email us any questions, comments, concerns, things like that, less concerns, hopefully. Our email address is nplaunchpad @FHEA.com. That is nplaunchpad@fhea.com. And any of the questions that you send to us, we actually may send uh answer them on air for you.

Jason Gleason 1:10

Yeah.

Christopher Gleason 1:10

So quick disclaimer this is for education only. If you have any um questions regarding state, employer, payer rules, anything like that, please go to the appropriate sources for those. All right. So let's start things on. What do NPs need to know about AANP and ANCC renewal requirements? And how can they avoid a last-minute certification scramble? V, what do you think about that?

Vanessa Pomarico 1:35

So the advice that I always tell people is that five years is going to go by in a flash. So don't wait until you're at four years and 11 months to go, oh, I haven't done any CEs. Where can I go and get these? And I tell everybody go to a conference, sign up for some CEs online. You know, Fitzgerald by Colibri has a whole library of things. And make sure that you dedicate time, take your CE days and get your continuing ed every year so you chip away at it. Um, I just actually finished doing some of my online CEs from after conference, um, and I needed to get a couple more farm credits in, and I added everything up. I have to renew in two more years, and I'm almost I've almost met my goal. I don't like to wait until the last minute. So that would be my advice. What about you, Jason? What do you advise people to do?

Jason Gleason 2:25

Oh, I take your advice. Yeah, I procrastinate like crazy and I hate it. But yeah, you're right. You don't want to be in a scramble because you got to get a lot of CE done. And often, often, here's what people do: they go to an online website for CE, there's an hour-long video, they click fast forward, it takes two minutes, they get the CE certificate. They cheat. And you're not you're you're only cheating yourself, right? Because the point of CE is to build knowledge. But I'll tell you what, if that's you out there, and there's a lot of people that do that, they now have a tool. So whoever creates these videos online for CE, they block that feature. You can no longer fast forward. So you have to sit there through the entire hour, which I think is great. I think is great because it really forces us to, you know, to uh get the full education that's being offered to us. But yeah, scramble, and I'll tell you what, this is such an amazing topic. The the two of you bring this up right now because I'll tell you what, I I knew that my uh renewal for certification was coming up, but I totally spaced it until like three weeks ago, and I got a message that said, uh, you're due at the end of the month. Right? So, and and I got it just fine. And I've I've had CE uh over the years, so I I so I was able to get my certification renewed. But you're right, don't don't put it off to the end and make sure you put it on every calendar in your phone. You know, if you have an old school calendar on the wall, make sure you know when your renewal is uh coming up. And they do send you notifications, but but be on top of things because I'll tell you, I knew one colleague who accidentally let it lapse. That is a freaking nightmare. Freaking nightmare. It takes like three to four weeks to get your certification done, right? But then it can affect your license. Your employer tells you nope, you're not seeing any other patients. And if you do see a patient, because some employers don't even know about this stuff, they don't keep track of it for you in some cases. But if you're taking care of patients and your board certification expired, that is huge, right? Huge malpractice. So yeah, I I totally agree with both of your comments.

Vanessa Pomarico 4:27

And do you really want to sit through taking those boards a second time if you don't have to? No way. No way.

Christopher Gleason 4:32

I swear I almost had a heart attack the first time I took it. No, thank you. I thought my eyes were gonna pop out of my head for each question. I was staring at it so intently that I thought my eyes were gonna pop out of my head by the time I was done. Um, one thing I would like to remind you all is that um I reminded him three months ago that his certification was coming due. Just want to say that alone.

Jason Gleason 4:51

You know, I am not even acknowledging you right now. No, I don't remember this.

Christopher Gleason 4:56

Yeah, that's a different one, just one thing important to know too is uh like Vanessa kind of touched on a little bit, know your requirements, certifying body hours, pharmacology hours if required, and your practice hour requirements. Because all of like Vanessa said, that those five years go quick, and you really, really need to be able to be on top of those things.

Jason Gleason 5:14

Well, and what I would add to that too is sometimes the requirements can change. They might require more CE. So I'd be checking out websites for the latest and greatest requirements that you need to meet, uh, because sometimes that changes. Not often, but it could.

Christopher Gleason 5:26

Yeah.

Vanessa Pomarico 5:27

But the thing is about it changing is that if you are within your five years and they make a change, your grant you you just go to whatever the the requirements were at the beginning. Yeah. Um so there's and and there is a difference between ANCC and AANP requirements. So, you know, make sure that you're looking at the appropriate website and looking, you know, at the difference. So we know that we have to recertify every five years. Um with uh AA and with, I'm sorry, ANCC, the American Nurses Credentialing Center, uh, that's 75 hours. So I'm ANCC certified. It was the only one that Connecticut at that time would accept. Um and so I'm still ANCC. And I have 75 CEs every five years, including 25 hours of pharmacology, and that pharmacology can sneak up on you. Every time we go to conference, I sign up for as much pharmacology as I possibly can to make sure that I get those 25 hours in because we also have in Connecticut 25 hours of mandatories in five different areas every year. Wow. So I do my pharmacology. Yeah, I do my pharmacology and then I do my like my infectious disease, you know, uh domestic violence, that kind of thing. And I so I'm and um, you know, um things like HIV or hepatitis C, any of the infectious disease stuff, I make sure that I get those hours in as well so that if I do get audited, I've got everything on there.

Christopher Gleason 6:58

Yeah. And uh speaking of the auditing, actually, uh Vanessa, and we touched on this in a previous episode. One of the things that's huge is when you're collecting that CE, make sure you have a folder on your computer that you can store all of this in. You have that one spot that you can always go to when you need it.

Jason Gleason 7:12

Right. Otherwise it's lost and you're scrambling at the last minute, right? You know, on that topic, one thing I love about the AANP, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, which is your professional organization, not the board recertification or renewal organization. But at AANP, they have a CE tracker, and I absolutely love it. For any CE you do with them, it's automatically tracked. Like recently for my board renewal, I went to that and it was so easy. I I confirmed my farm hours and my other CE. It was so good. And then you can take other CE that you've done, like at Fitzgerald, F-H-E A, and put that into that CE tracker too, and it keeps track of it all for you. So that's a great tool. Look for that if you're a member of AANP. Definitely.

Vanessa Pomarico 7:58

But there's also different, you know, we don't necessarily have to take like a continuing ed class. So um so, Christopher, you just finished your DNP. You when you recertify, you can actually look to see um for one academic semester, you can get 15 contact hours. Yeah.

Jason Gleason 8:17

Oh wow.

Vanessa Pomarico 8:18

I don't know if you knew that. Yeah. And if it's a if if it's an academic quarter instead of a semester, then you can apply for 12.5 contact hours. But your thesis or dissertation for ANCC related to a particular specialty, they will accept that. But uh AANP doesn't necessarily have that. You'd have to check their website. But I know for ANCC, not just the uh thesis or dissertation, but if you were doing an evidence-based um uh evidence-based practice project, like on your unit or a QI project, which is what you did that used a problem solving approach, you can actually apply for that. So you might be ahead of the game for your recertification. Actually, publications too.

Christopher Gleason 9:04

The other thing to keep in mind too is if you do any precepting um for a practitioners that are coming out, and you know, a few years down the road, if you decide you want to do any precepting, you can actually use those precepting hours as as part of your um CE requirements as well, which is great. Yeah.

Vanessa Pomarico 9:18

Right. And even volunteers. So, Jason, you are a volunteer because with A and P because you're a big muckety muck there now. Come on. I'm at the bottom of the food chain. You're a region director, are you not?

Jason Gleason 9:32

I'm on the board of directors, yeah.

Vanessa Pomarico 9:34

So being on the board of directors, serving on a committee, if you're on an editorial or review board, or if you've done medical missions, you can actually count that as towards your um recertification.

Jason Gleason 9:44

And I had no idea about that. That's great. That's really good.

Vanessa Pomarico 9:47

Yes, indeed. Yeah.

Jason Gleason 9:48

So I really hope our listeners are listening closely out there, because this is platinum gold information, truly. What do you guys think about the trend of State Board of Nursing and even for recertification, the honor system for CE, where you no longer have to submit your CE certificates. It's just based on your word, right? But they can audit you at any point. What do you what do you think of that?

Christopher Gleason 10:13

For me, I kind of because I'm part of that now, I kind of like it. Um previously you had to add your every CE credit, which can be daunting, believe it or not. Yeah. Um and then and making sure obviously each either way, you're gonna have to make sure that you have you know all of your pharmacology hours, all of your you know, other CE hours. But I kind of like it because it just makes the process a little bit easier. Yeah. And the the idea that you can be audited at any any time, right? I think that really keeps you honest because if you if you are audited and they do find out that you have a met the good argument for certification. Goodbye or certification. Goodbye to your certification, exactly. So V, what do you what's your take on that?

Vanessa Pomarico 10:52

So I'm gonna just play devil's advocate here because you both know how anal I am about a lot of things. And like you, I make sure that I do it because I if I do get audited, I don't want to lose my life.

Jason Gleason 11:03

You're so anal, I'm surprised you're not a practicologist. I do I did work in GI for a very short period of time. Yeah, come on. You are not anal. You're not anal. Oh, I so am. Yes, I most certainly am.

Vanessa Pomarico 11:16

Have you met me yet?

Jason Gleason 11:17

You get shit done. Well, I think you're anal when it comes to making Italian food and pasta, because I love it when you're you're you're very detailed about that, especially, right?

Vanessa Pomarico 11:26

Well, but you know the shifty power. That is my superpower. So, but I but I think you know, uh for me, I I do I agree with the honor system. Um I uh but I think that's why a lot of people are scrambling because they're afraid that they're gonna get audited. But you have to wonder how many people don't because they're gamblers. I'm not a gambler, right? Yeah, but they're gonna gamble and go, oh yeah, well, I'll wait I'll, you know, I'll worry about that when it happens. But then, you know, you you just mentioned this, Jason, that when you talk about going to continuing ed, it's really to enhance your knowledge and keep you on the cutting edge of clinical practice. How many of those people that are not holding their feet to the fire and they're not doing the contact hours and now they're kind of sliding back and they're into this old practice? I think it's I think down the line it's going to become a problem.

Jason Gleason 12:16

It is tough, you know, and not to give FHEA a plug, but what I love about an NP certification, board certification review course is that it's also meant for practicing NPs out there. It might be switching specialties or just want the latest and greatest information. It's in such a good format and it's so well organized, and the content comes from the best, right? Dr. Fitzschild, herself, and our entire team. And I love it, and I get such good positive feedback from practicing NPs that take that course to stay up on the latest and greatest information and they get it all in one weekend, tons of CE along with that. So yeah, that just reminded me of that. Because it is a challenge. It is a challenge. And I agree with you. If you're if you're thinking you're gonna just hedge through and make a big gamble, do you think the national certification organizations are ever going to trust you again? No. No. No. And I think a a lot of the the the fine print is so important to read through because they could they could uh not certify you.

Vanessa Pomarico 13:17

But again, what does that say about you as a person if you're gonna try and cheat the system?

Jason Gleason 13:21

You should not be taking care of patients if that's you, right? Exactly.

Christopher Gleason 13:24

Yeah. Yeah. And one other thing to think about too with uh doing the weekend courses when you're when you're after you've passed your boards and things like that, that stress is no longer there. So you can actually learn the information. Oh, right. You have fun. You should actually have fun with it and not stress, right?

Jason Gleason 13:40

Absolutely. And follow your passions, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa Pomarico 13:44

And how many times, I don't know if you get this question, Jason, when you're teaching review, people say, Oh, well, this count is, you know, um continuing ed hours. Unfortunately, it doesn't, because it only counts as continuing ed after you've been certified. Yeah. So if you take a board review, you can't count that toward your five-year CEs. But you know, certainly you can take it again, and there's a boatload of pharmacology in there.

Jason Gleason 14:08

And I honestly I disagree with that. I wish it was counted because it is CE. We're preparing these folks and it's great information for them. But but I get it. I get it. Yeah. And that actually leads into the next point.

Christopher Gleason 14:19

So make sure to confirm your license renewal rules and make sure that you know the difference between your certification requirements and your uh state requirements, because they can vary different uh very uh widely, actually. So when you're looking at your certifications, one of the great things to do is to build a renewal calendar. Build a calendar, have your DEA um renewal on it, have your national certification uh renewal on it, have your board of nursing uh certification on it, and just keep track of that. Because like we said earlier, you don't want to be caught in the end and not have your CEs done and not have uh those things that you need done.

Jason Gleason 14:58

Yeah, and and you won't practice. And if you do practice without them, enjoy being on the witness stand with an attorney asking you why did you practice it when you weren't even certified, right? That's a big deal. They will take everything you have.

Christopher Gleason 15:10

So, V, I'm kind of curious. How do you build a CE strategy that strengthens your clinical ski uh skills instead of collecting random credits?

Vanessa Pomarico 15:19

I am very um focused on what I want to learn when I go to like a conference. So, for example, uh, you know, as I mentioned, I like to do things that have uh a lot of pharmacology so I can get my farm credits done. But I also look into areas where I'm not an expert. And and certainly, you know, I took some uh things at A and P this year on AI because that's something that's very foreign to me. Uh and I'm trying to learn as much as I can about it. But I make it very focused on on what my interests are and where my weaknesses are. And so you might have to just sit down and make a list of what are the areas I'm really not good in. So one of the other sessions, we don't do any of the weight loss, metabolic weight loss medications in our office. We have a whole entire team that does that. Um but I like to know more about it, you know, and not just the fact that like I know what the side effects are and that kind of thing, but you know, let's face it, there's always something new coming out. So I I sat in on not one but three different um sessions on the GLPs and on the metabolic weight loss because I really wanted to get an idea, not just from one person, but a couple of different perspectives. And it was really great to be able to come back with that information to share with the rest of my team when I came back in the office.

Jason Gleason 16:37

That's great.

Christopher Gleason 16:38

What do you think about it, Jason?

Jason Gleason 16:39

Well, I I think I need to follow Vanessa's leading as well. I think because when I go to a conference, like a Fitzgerald conference, one of their national conferences, not for board review, but for CE, if I speak at one or if I attend one, or AANP, I go to their big national conference. My ADHD goes absolutely bonkers when I look at the schedule. I have no plan, I have no organization. I'm so excited to learn all these new things. And obviously you can't go to every session, right? And so it's like I go bonkers. It's like, what am I gonna learn today? Right. But I love your approach to have it organized. And it made me think of something that this would be really cool to do. You know, every year say, okay, this year I'm gonna focus on this. This year I'm gonna focus on this, right? Yeah, and do something like that. So I I love what you just said, and and I take it to heart. I I love your advice because I I am going to follow that for now on. Maybe I'll learn more stuff.

Vanessa Pomarico 17:31

Yeah.

Christopher Gleason 17:32

I think another important thing too is it mix the formats. You know, go to the conferences, listen to podcasts. Yeah. Look at journal-based CE and even skills workshop. And if you go into that A and P conference, the National Conference, they actually have skills workshops that you can sign up for, which can be a huge help in your clinical practice.

Jason Gleason 17:48

Well, and you mentioned listening to podcasts to prepare. You know, we don't talk about clinical stuff in our podcast, NP Launchpad, but and again, not another plug, but I absolutely love this, and I get such great feedback from students that they love it as well. That our our uh wonderful Dr. Fitzgerald herself recorded, what was it, Vanessa, over 65 different podcast episodes? It was incredible, right? And and they're just brief, they're only for a few minutes, but she takes a question. So our listeners out there preparing for your boards. She takes a question and analyzes the heck out of it and gives you the rationale. Why was this the correct answer? Why were why were these incorrect? And it's only a few minutes long, so easy to listen to on the go, and such a wonderful thing. And the best part is it's free. It's free. So yeah, so I appreciate what you're saying. Use different formats so learning doesn't become boring, right? Absolutely.

Vanessa Pomarico 18:37

And you know, go to a skills workshop and learn something that you can bring back to your office that's going to increase your revenue.

Christopher Gleason 18:45

Yep. Definitely. One of the things that I did actually after becoming a new um nurse practitioner is I attended the AA and P conference and I did a skill shop on suturing, simple suture skills, because at the time I was working in an urgent care where that was one of the requirements for the for uh providers was to provide suturing skills. So and that was a great resource for me. The uh the other thing too is remember to save all your documentation. Oh yeah. And it kind of touches on what we said earlier about keeping all your documentation in a folder on your desktop, just so you know where it is. And I think one of the other things about CE too is if you have a weak area, something that you're just you know, you know you're not strong in, focus on that. If you're going to those conferences, look for those those classes that are gonna focus are gonna help you focus in on that and help strengthen you as well. So, Jason, how can new NPs map the next two to three years so their careers keep moving forward instead of drifting?

Jason Gleason 19:42

That's a great question. I think a lot of what we already talked about ties into that, right? I would say develop a master plan, right? And and again, keeping track of things, whether it's an electronic file, a physical file, I'd recommend you do both actually. And I would actually do this as well. When you talk about electronic files, I would save it on your hard drive on your computer, but I would also, I would also do this, save it on a thumb drive because hard drives on computers, I've been there and done that, can totally crash, can cost thousands of dollars to recover that information, and it's priceless information, right? So I would even put it on a thumb drive as an extra backup because it's just so important. And like Christopher said, stay on top of it because it's so easy to procrastinate. And then by the time you know a year is gone, two years are gone, and you're trying to remember where things were. Yeah, so stay organized, stay organized, and make a backup copy of your backup copy on something easy, like a little thumb drive. How easy is that, right? So that's what I'd recommend.

Vanessa Pomarico 20:39

Graven saving it for the cloud. Oh, the cloud, yeah, exactly.

Jason Gleason 20:43

Unless the cloud goes down, who knows, right?

Vanessa Pomarico 20:46

You know, you never know. So you know, think about it. You know, when I was doing my thesis back when they used to do thesis in a master's program, I was so terrified of exactly what you just said, Jason, that if my computer went down or my you know, one of my external drives decided it was just gonna peter out on me. And that was I'm dating myself, but we had floppy disks. And I remember having four and five floppy disks. I remember giving one to my parents and putting one in the safe deposit box. Um and I recently just shredded all of my paper, because believe it or not, even eight years ago when I was defending my dissertation, I just shredded everything because they they didn't do anything that was online. I still had to do paper, even though I was submitting all of my edits online, but I still had all of the interviews that I did and all of that, you know, blinded information that I finally got to to shred it. But I had everything on a disk, on a flash drive, on uh you know, up in the cloud, and then in an external drive. You you can't save it in too many places.

Christopher Gleason 21:52

Not that, uh yeah, you both of you should actually remember this. There used to be old floppy disks. They were probably about this big. And I used to play a game on it called. Oregon Trail, it was Oh my gosh. It was it was pixels on a screen, people. Pixels on a screen. So yes, I am dating myself.

Jason Gleason 22:06

Oregon Trail on the Commodore sixty-four. The very first computer I ever got. Do you remember those? Yes, I do. Wow. Times have changed. Now we use our phones for everything. Yeah. Crazy.

Christopher Gleason 22:16

So and you always died of dysentery.

Jason Gleason 22:18

You did. I always died at dysentery on that Oregon Trail. Always. Rough life. Back to our topic.

Christopher Gleason 22:29

One other good point is to map out your next two to three years. You know, look at skills, look at mentorship, look at leadership. You know, find a signature project. And do one clinical deep dive. Find one system skill, such as a quality improvement project, coding workflow, or one just uh just developing one leadership skill. Yeah. So what do you think about asking for stretch opportunities, Jason?

Jason Gleason 22:54

I don't know. I think it's oh excuse me. It's always a good thing to stretch. Is that what you're asking me? No.

Christopher Gleason 23:02

Looking at stretch opportunities, flexing your intellectual muscle, as it were. Oh, nice. Looking at looking at joining committees, doing precepting, quality improvement projects, all of those things that's going to keep your your um your skills up to date as you move along in your practice.

Jason Gleason 23:17

You know, as Vanessa mentioned earlier, you can get CE credit for those things, right? A lot of those things, which is wonderful. But here's the deal, you know, to our listeners out there, you are about to join a profession that is incredible. And it's incredible because of people like you. You have all this knowledge, you have this passion. And when I teach a board review course, what excites me most is the future. And all our listeners out there, you're our future. And you have all this excitement and this passion and this knowledge. And if you don't share it on committees and volunteering for different groups that you can be a part of to share your knowledge and your passion, and even if you're you're you're and even your positive energy. You may not be the smartest NP out there, and many of us aren't, but maybe you're the most energetic or most positive. Find out your gift, your talent, what you're known for, your brand, as we mentioned in the other episode, and go for it and volunteer for these different things and share yourself because when you do, the world's gonna be a better place. Tissue, please.

Christopher Gleason 24:17

Get out of here. So, one tip I want to do leave uh leave you guys with is keep your runway long, always be building that next step. And what does that mean? That means always always be willing to learn. Yeah. The day that you stop asking questions as a professional, as a nurse practitioner, is the day that people should start worrying about your practice, to be honest with you. Right, right. So we've got some resources to share with you, and these are gonna be in your show notes, so I'm not gonna dive too deep into them. Um we have the AANPCB, also known as the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners Certification Board.

Jason Gleason 24:51

And that's their new name, by the way, out there. Yeah, they just had a rebrand. They just had a rebrand. Can you repeat that again? Yes.

Christopher Gleason 24:58

Uh it is AANP CB, which is the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners Certification Board. Instead of just the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, which is a good thing.

Jason Gleason 25:06

And it's a big change, and they haven't changed much, but their branding. So if you go to their website, actually, you'll see that. And you might be confused, like, am I at the right place? But you are. They just changed their name and their brand. And I have to say this, I have to say this. There's the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, like I mentioned before. That's your professional organization, all the CE and everything we've been talking about, right? In our episodes. American Association of Nurse Practitioners is completely different than the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. There's absolutely no connection between the two, between the two. So please know that. And again, as Christopher mentioned, their new name.

Christopher Gleason 25:42

And one other resource is the ANCC certification. And the website for that is listed in your show notes. So next up is our favorite part of the back for fiction.

Jason Gleason 25:55

Cue the music. Did we ever get any prizes? Does anybody know favorite? I know. I want a prize to fall from the ceiling. Confetti made. Confetti. We should get confetti. Confetti. Where's our producer? Chris, where are you?

Christopher Gleason 26:07

That would be a mess to clean up, though.

Jason Gleason 26:09

I think Chris should come to our studios, Vanessa, your home, our home, and he could like throw confetti at us from behind the scenes.

Vanessa Pomarico 26:17

Only if he cleans it up afterwards. There you go.

Christopher Gleason 26:20

Chris, you got to clean it up too. Yes. All right. So, Vanessa, do certification renewal rules differ between certifying bodies? Fact or fiction.

Vanessa Pomarico 26:32

So that is a fact. Although you have to check the websites for whatever uh certifying body that you have to make sure that you're following the appropriate renewal process.

Christopher Gleason 26:45

Perfect. And that is true. Jason, waiting until the month your certification expires is a solid strategy. Oh, you know it.

Jason Gleason 26:54

Absolutely, 100%. If you don't like your board certification, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you don't like having one, go ahead and try that. That is true. I couldn't even say that with a straight face. Oh my gosh.

Vanessa Pomarico 27:04

Some of these some of these are Did you develop that question with Jason in mind?

Jason Gleason 27:09

Yes. Yes, I did. Exactly. Listen to you. Listen to you. Give me a hard time.

Christopher Gleason 27:15

Vanessa. We love you.

Vanessa Pomarico 27:20

Absolutely. Yeah. That is a fact. Everything in one place, and you don't have to worry about sweating it out, trying to get in under the wire.

Jason Gleason 27:29

Yeah, you don't want to do that. You really are dating each other. You don't even know who Richard Simmons is. I barely do. Vanessa, to be honest, did you ever jam out to Richard Simmons?

Vanessa Pomarico 27:39

Never play the records. I used to teach aerobics, and I actually met Richard Simmons on several occasions.

Jason Gleason 27:46

You did not. You did not tell us.

Vanessa Pomarico 27:48

Tell us with him. How is he in person?

Jason Gleason 27:50

Is he like he is on TV?

Vanessa Pomarico 27:52

He is he was because he's sadly sadly. He was the nicest. What you saw on TV was exactly who you saw in person. I took master classes with him. He was a riot. He was a keynote speaker at our conferences, and he he was an absolute riot. But I'll send you a picture. I'll have to dig one up and send it to you guys.

Jason Gleason 28:14

Maybe in our next episode, we could post a picture of you and Richard. There you go. Yes, indeed. Let's keep that in mind. Yeah. That's really cool, though. Wow, that is so interesting.

Vanessa Pomarico 28:24

And Chris, you can edit that out. We don't need to have that in our episode.

Jason Gleason 28:28

Keep it in, Chris. It's gonna make it interesting. I love that. I love that. All right. Absolutely. You know, you know what would be funny if after we talked about that, you put like sweating with the oldies graphic on the screen? That'd be so cool. That'd be funny. Right? It'll wake our listeners up. Yeah, that's great. It's good, good. All right.

Christopher Gleason 28:47

All right. Moving on. Jason, some sub-specialty credentials can open doors depending on your goals. Fact or fiction.

Jason Gleason 28:53

I would say yes. That that's true. Yeah. Yeah. If you have a passion for something, get out there and get those sub-specialty certifications. You bet?

Christopher Gleason 29:00

Absolutely, absolutely. So one important plug for all of our listeners out there. We appreciate all of you, and we'd like to share some special savings with you. Visit FHEA.com and use the code launchpad20 for 20% off all CE and memberships. This is just a thank you from us for supporting the show. Again, that is the code is launchpad20 for 20% off all CEN memberships. All right. Next up, we're going to look at some questions from the audience. If you have any questions for us, you can email at us at nplaunchpad at fhea.com. Again, that's nplaunchpad at fhea.com. All right. So what is the renewal deadline and what CE requirement still feels confusing, Jason?

Jason Gleason 29:46

Why would you ask me that? I don't know the answer, obviously, because that just happened to me, right? Yeah. You gotta pay attention to stuff. Yeah. So what is your renewal deadline and what CE requirements still feel confusing? I'm confused. I am totally confused, apparently, on when you are supposed to submit your board certification renewal application. Thank goodness I got it in on time. No thanks to you, I might add.

Christopher Gleason 30:08

Hey, I reminded you to three months previously.

Jason Gleason 30:10

Yes, you did. I guess you did. B, what do you think about that question?

Vanessa Pomarico 30:15

You know, I just, as I recommended before, every year do your CE so you chip away at it a little bit every year, and this way you're not scrambling toward the end.

Christopher Gleason 30:25

Absolutely, absolutely. All right. So what certification or skill are you considering next? And what is your goal behind it? V, what do you think?

Vanessa Pomarico 30:34

So believe it or not, I'm actually looking into doing medical Botox, not cosmetic dermatology. I have a number of special needs patients, um, people a lot of um adults with uh pretty severe autism, pervasive developmental disorder, that kind of thing. And they have a lot of contractors and that we don't have a lot of neurologists in our area any longer. We used to have a lot of them, but unfortunately a lot of them have retired and moved out. And I'm actually thinking about doing that because it's so necessary, even though it's kind of a niche, you know, uh population, but it's so necessary. And that's that's actually the next certification that or the next skill that I'm looking at doing is to do this medical botox for people like that.

Jason Gleason 31:20

That's how incredible is that. You know, I had a family member and and she had horrible contractures to the point where she'd dig her fingers into her palm. And that would have been so helpful, right? That's what you're talking about, right? Contractures. Yeah.

Vanessa Pomarico 31:32

Yeah.

Jason Gleason 31:33

That's a that's incredible. Wow.

Christopher Gleason 31:35

What are your thoughts on that?

Jason Gleason 31:37

Well, gosh, I have to remind you, Christopher, that I've been trying to talk you into our next academic journey to get our PhD. No. Come on.

Christopher Gleason 31:44

No.

Jason Gleason 31:45

I think the audience should write him and tell him to do it. No. Come on. You want it? V help me. No.

Vanessa Pomarico 31:51

Yeah, listen, when I got that EDD, my husband just said to me, Do you think he could take a year off before you commit to anything? And yeah. And Jason, do you remember like a month later, you and I were going through the Fitzgerald boot camp.

Jason Gleason 32:04

Yes, you were. You listened, Vanessa, didn't you? Yes. I listened really well. I'm thankful we did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. PhD is not happening. It isn't happening.

Vanessa Pomarico 32:13

I wouldn't even never say never.

Jason Gleason 32:15

Never say never. Never say never. Well, at this point, it's a never.

Christopher Gleason 32:20

Come on. Um, all right. So let's do a wrap-up landing checklist. First on, first on that checklist is build a CE tracker. You know, we've touched on this throughout this episode, and we've even touched on it in in previous episodes as well. And set renewal reminders. This is so important so you don't have those certifications laps. Yeah. And map your renewal cycle now so you're never doing CE in a panic spiral. You know, we talked about how the with AA and P certification, it's every five years. So make sure that you have all of those uh requirements checked off, including, you know, if you have farm farm credits, make sure you have all of those farm credits checked off as well. So what's your homework for the week? We want you to create a CE tracker, a spreadsheet or app, and log your last three activities. That's a good idea. Is it just we're it's it's just a way to get started, get your uh feet a little wet with it, and see where it goes. Yeah. So that is a wrap for this week's episode. First off, we want to say thank you to everyone for listening. And we would love it if you guys would drop five stars. If not five, then four and a half, but try for five. Um we would also like you to hit follow, tap subscribe. That helps our algorithm with all of the podcasts, and we get to reach out to all of the community that we want to reach out to, which is so important to us. Yeah, it is. And share this. Share this with your colleagues, share it with your friends, share it with nurse practitioners that are in school, some that are even people that are just thinking about getting into the nursing field, share it with them as well because it all of this information could be important to them.

Jason Gleason 33:49

You bet.

Christopher Gleason 33:50

All right, folks, that's a wrap. Vanessa and Jason, do you have anything to add to any to this week?

Vanessa Pomarico 33:56

Another great discussion, as always.

Jason Gleason 33:58

I I just love our discussions.

Christopher Gleason 34:00

I love this, and I hope our friends out there do too. Absolutely. And y'all have a fantastic week, and we'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye guys. Bye, everyone. You've been listening to NP Launchpad, presented by Fitzgerald Health Education Associates. Like, subscribe, and share. And for more tools to power your NP career, visit FHEA.com.