My name is Nonye Aghanya and I’m a Family nurse practitioner (FNP). I have practiced as an FNP in the adult, geriatric, and pediatric clinical settings for over 16 years but prior to that, I also practiced as a Registered Nurse and a licensed Practical Nurse. At some point, I co-owned and operated an out-patient anticoagulation clinic and I currently work in a retail clinic.  My journey as a medical care provider began over 25 years ago when I signed on to become a Nurse’s Assistant following my arrival to Brooklyn, New York, from my birth country of Nigeria. As I further yearned to provide patient care in different capacities, I gradually advanced my education. Looking back, I am very grateful to God for the experiences and opportunities that I’ve encountered which have enabled me to start off as a Nurse’s Assistant and with time and dedication, eventually co-own and independently operate a private out-patient medical clinic in New Jersey as an FNP at The Anti-Thrombotic Center (2000-2006). So, for over 25 years, I had always maintained some form of patient contact in many different clinical settings, either in the patient’s home (home care setting),  the hospital in-patient setting, out-patient medical clinics, and currently in the retail clinic setting. Such diverse experiences helped improve my ability to discern patient’s behaviors, characteristics, and attitudes and the effects of such attitudes as facilitators or deterrents to the development of productive clinician-patient relationships.

My personality: Many years ago, as a young clinician, I would say I had more of a “Type A” personality. I was overly assertive and very structured as I always thought ahead, set goals, and followed specific rules to achieve such goals in a timely fashion.  However, with the passage of time in 25 years, I’ve learned to become more of a listener and an observer as I adapt to situations in my environment (predicted and unforeseen). I guess one can attribute that to many factors such as: gaining more life experiences with age (acquired more wisdom), being a wife and mother of 4 girls aged 26 years, 16 years, 11 years, and 6 years old (definitely gained more patience with that!). In addition, although I’d always thought of myself as empathetic, a recent medical scare as a patient following a surgical procedure made me even more compassionate to patient’s plight as it became much easier for me to easily relate to patient’s concerns, reservations, stereotyping, anxieties, and other attributes.

Most importantly, as a Christian, I’ve always believed in practicing with the guidance of Romans 12:15 REJOICE WITH THEM THAT REJOICE AND WEEP WITH THEM THAT WEEP.

My past and current experiences resulted in my strong desire to write a simple guide book as a contribution to improving communication not only between clinicians and patient, but also a guide for all of us to improve communication with one another in all facets of life.

I invite you to please come with me on this short journey as I blog weekly about the contents of my book, Simple Tips To Developing a Productive Clinician-Patient Relationship. Occasionally, I’ll ask a simple question to get us all to begin a dialogue, while exploring diverse views about clinician-patient relationships with the goal of improving communication with one another. Don’t forget to leave your thoughts and comments!

Thanks so much for your time.

The book, Simple Tips To Developing A Productive Clinician-Patient Relationship is available on the author’s website and on Amazon.