Your patient passed out for no obvious reason, so their family insisted that they see their PCP. Now they’re waiting in your exam room, and you need a roadmap to determine what happened, what...

Fatigue is a tricky clinical topic that can seem overwhelming in a primary care visit – even for seasoned NPs. Is it acute or chronic? Is it a standalone symptom, or are there chronic...

In Part 2 of our Resistant Hypertension videos, I’m looking at hyperaldosteronism, or high aldosterone levels, as a cause for treatment-resistant hypertension — and an under-recognized...

Resistant hypertension is a common chief complaint in primary care clinics. But for new nurse practitioners, there’s a lot to sort through.

Resistant Hypertension in Primary Care

In this...

Dizziness alone accounts for about 5% of all primary care office visits in the US.

5%! That's a huge number.

But as a chief complaint, dizziness is somewhat nebulous.

The causes of dizziness can...

One of the first things I encountered as a new nurse practitioner seeing patients on my own was the decision-making process of when to bring a patient back to the clinic again at the end of the...

Seeing "lower leg swelling" as the chief complaint for my patient as a new nurse practitioner was incredibly stressful.

Should you give diuretics for symptom control? Is this something serious...

Interpreting lipid panels in primary care can be deceptively confusing! It's a routine lab that you'll see (or already see) every day in primary care. We need to know when to order it, how to...

You're on call and you get paged about a critical INR...

You get a new patient from the ED who just started on coumadin for a DVT...

You're spending way too much time leafing through...

If you're overwhelmed and intimidated by preoperative exams, you're not alone.

Even a healthy patient undergoing a low-risk surgery can be stressful, but knowing the guidelines and tools can...