Dr. Mimi Secor gives the Summer 2015 Alumni Commencement address.
Dr. Mimi Secor is a recent graduate of our post-master’s Doctor of Nursing Practice program. She gave the alumni address at our summer commencement earlier this month, and she was also the recipient of the Richard P. Nielsen Student Service Award. We took a few minutes to sit down for an interview with Dr. Secor about her experience in the program at RMUoHP, her career and her decision to live a healthier life.
Enjoy her thoughts!
What was your experience like in the DNP program?
It has been quite an interesting adventure for me academically. I was very fearful that I wouldn’t be able to meet the standard and do all the homework, and I had apprehension about my writing. But immediately as soon as I started into my four courses that first semester I realized how much it was going to benefit me, and it was immediately beneficial to me in my clinical practice, which was shocking! I just didn’t have any idea that that would be the case.
That first semester we started to learn about how to scrutinize literature better. We learned about leadership theory and nursing theory in a way that seemed more applicable to my clinical practice than I had perceived before and it surprised me. I wasn’t really looking forward to nursing theory but I loved it. It was just a surprise. I came in with preconceived notions that it would either be redundant or that I wouldn’t really be able to apply everything clinically or to my professional life and I found exactly the opposite! So I always tell people that are looking at DNP programs to think about how applicable it will be from the very beginning, the first day, the first semester. I was really pleasantly surprised.
It also surprised me the rigor. I was ready, but not quite ready to literally devote my every waking moment ) except for activities of daily living) to homework, but now I realize that that’s the nature of a Doctoral education. It takes that amount of effort to really get it into your head.
Were you still working?
I was, part-time, (thank goodness part-time), but I also do a lot of traveling and speaking and I had to scale that back. I just could not do the normal travel and speaking and still get my homework done. I would normally travel nearly every week, but I cut it back to a couple of times a month and that was even challenging. I did not sleep on an airplane for nearly 2 years.
I became quickly a better writer though, which was really surprising to me. I was phobic about it- I had no confidence in my writing ability. I actually had put off doing my doctoral studies because of that, but the professors were so good that they just whipped us into shape right away and I was impressed! I needed it, and we have to be able to write and articulate when we’re doctorally prepared so that was good.
Did you have a lot of experience or understanding of research before pursuing your DNP?
I had a research course when I was a Master’s student and I thought I knew a fair amount about it, but when I took these courses I found out that I really didn’t know as much as I needed to, especially about scrutinizing research- really getting to the best research and evaluating it. I also thought I knew what evidence-based practice was, but I really didn’t. I think that really was eye-opening. I think it’s at the core of how I think clinically now- I’m always thinking about my perspective, the patient’s perspective and then how the literature informs the sort of triangle of evidence-based practice perspective. So it just reinforced my approach clinically. It’s kind of shocking because that’s a big area of scrutiny and criticism by a fair number of students and graduates. I don’t think they connect those dots, and I think they should. I even tell my patients, I say, “This is helping me provide you with better care,” because they’re like “why are you doing that at your age?”
Because you can!
Because I can. Exactly. I’m going that way anyway, and I might as well be doing what I want to do.
What made you choose a DNP instead of a PhD?
For me, being clinically focused it’s like the perfect terminal degree, and also my interest in education seems to be a better match with a DNP than with a PhD. I was thinking about a PhD a long time ago, but it was just not the right timing, and a long time ago it would have been better if I had decided to focus on a career in research. But my focus has always been in clinical practice and education, so it’s the perfect match.
We need the research expertise and credibility to be able to interface with the PhDs so we can work in tandem with them. I really had issues with the detail of what we had to learn, but now I’m really happy about it. I feel like I still can’t maybe stand side by side with a PhD in terms of their knowledge of research, but that’s fine- that’s not the focus of the DNP. It opened my eyes pretty wide.
What do you think having a DNP will add to your career?
I think it has already added to my career because it has expanded my perspective and it also reinforced the way that I practice and the way I want to practice at a higher level in terms of the quality that I provide. My scientific inquiry is also at a deeper level than it was before, so it’s already helped me. And it has also helped me in the world of being a national educator and leader, because people really regard the DNP degree, and so that is helping me in my speaking career as well as a leader. And I think it is helping to recruit people to do their DNP because I have such a visible platform out there. If I didn’t have such a positive experience I would just be quiet, but I had a positive experience so I hope other people can realize how much it can benefit them clinically.
What kind of service do you get to do?
I think my focus for my service has always been in my profession, although it also is to the community as well. Within my profession I have really helped grow it, especially at my state level by helping my other small group of nurse practitioners, helping to get legislation passed that would allow us to prescribe, that would allow us for insurance reimbursement. And I also helped organize so that our Nurse Practitioners in the state of Massachusetts would have a cohesive group that we could organize under, so that was a lot of service to my profession during the years that I was involved in that in the 1980s and 1990s, which is why I believe I received the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award from Massachusetts from that same group, because of the effort that I put into helping us advance the profession in that state.
And also, I have always been very involved in my community service. I have always volunteered as a nurse practitioner in prisons and in the community. A lot of my education to consumers has always been volunteer, whether it’s to firefighters or EMTs or churches and just civic groups; I have just always done that. I like everybody I have ever worked with, including hairdressers. I have spoken to so many different groups over the years, just bringing information I know to the masses.
Your clinical focus is Women’s health right?
Right, but my earlier background was in emergency care, so I did a lot of educating to consumers early on in the area of emergency care. Meaning CPR, EMTs, First Aid classes, everything from emergency childbirth to you name it. I have never delivered a baby on a plane and I don’t want to deliver a baby on a plane, but I know how to do it.
Even working in rural areas like when I took a job in Alaska, that was really service to the community because it is so hard to get people off the road system to live in a remote community, and I feel like I did service to my own rural community in western Alaska for 7 years.
What did you do there?
I was a primary care provider Nurse Practitioner with another PA, and we provided primary care to a good portion of the town. It was pretty neat. I had to fly in and out of my town- you couldn’t drive out of it. It was not that small, there were 5,000 people, but It serviced a land mass area the size of Oregon. It was basically all of Western Alaska, and we were the capitol city, so you can imagine Portland having a population of 5,000. It was pretty wild.
I think another piece of my service is just being dedicated to educating my profession and always thinking about when I learn something, how I can pass it on to the masses of nurse practitioners. And I see that as a service to my profession, because it is hard work. It is anxiety provoking; I get nervous even though I’ve been doing it a long time.
What else would you like to talk about?
Dr. Mimi Secor with Nurse Practitioner profession founder Dr. Loretta Ford.
I think the biggest event this year is the 50th anniversary of the Nurse Practitioner profession and also the fact that we have so many numbers now, over 200,000 Nurse Practitioners, and the humble beginnings started with Dr. Loretta Ford in 1965. I interviewed her for my radio show, and she was at our big convention in New Orleans a couple of months ago that was attended by 5,600 Nurse Practitioners from the US and the world. It was really exciting, so I think that’s a piece of what’s just so exciting about this graduation this particular year for me. [Dr. Loretta Ford is] amazing, I think I have a picture with her that I can send you. At 94 she’s giving presentations and meeting all the people, and after my radio show when we finished the interview, she’s like “When are we going to do another one? We have so much to talk about!” So she’s really my professional chronologic mentor. If I can be 94 and still be vital and contributing to my profession then how awesome is that! That means I’ll get a return on my educational investment! That’s what I worry about , that’s part of why I tried to be as healthy as I could in this program.
I don’t know if that’s a piece of my story: that I really committed to getting healthier in this program. I decided it would be an experience of extreme stress that would require for me extreme self-care, so I undertook from day one, recording my food, exercising and dealing with my stress in a positive way. I may be the only graduate that graduates not having had any coffee, alcohol or medications. So it was a big deal.
How much of a change was that for you?
Well, I was honing what I naturally do. I naturally exercise for my stress, but when you get really busy, how do you cope? How do you keep those health pieces in your life? And that really was the test for me. I can’t counsel my patients and help them maintain their weight loss and their healthy habits if I don’t know how to help them during their times of stress, so that was my experiment to figure out if I could do that. And I did it, which means that I can now learn from that experience and help others in my practice and my colleagues to do it too. Why be a train wreck and just crash and burn? I certainly can see exactly how it happens. When I’m tired, when I’m overwhelmed, when I’m depressed, I mean, the whole program is really, really hard. You’re never really relaxed, you’re never not stressed, so you just have to kind of, override the tendencies to go for chips and alcohol or whatever else and default to healthy habits, which is not easy. It’s very hard.
Let’s talk about Dr. Onieal; how did her influence impact you?
I think it is important to really emphasize how critically influential the quality of the director is, and Dr. Onieal is just a fantastic leader and director of this program. She is the reason why I decided to come to this RMUoHP program because I trusted her. I knew she had great integrity and brilliance and she would bring a great team of faculty together. And she’d been trying to twist my arm to attend for a while anyway, and I just want to thank her for all the years of service. I know she assumed the director position in like 2008 and she has just done a great job in how she has supported us as students so tremendously throughout our academic adventure. She’s just great.
For additional information on nursing education (including doctoral degrees and certificates) or to earn a DNP at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions, visit:
