Crystal Mull

I am living the cliche that if you love the job you do you will never have to work a day in your life. I can say that I love my profession. After working in the Newborn/Neonatal Intensive Nursery for some 7 years following graduating nursing school at Western Carolina University in 1987, I was given the opportunity to return to school to obtain my Neonatal Nurse Practitioner degree. At that time, master's programs were not as common and NNP certificate programs were shorter and less expensive so I opted for that route. I completed the NNP program at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV in 1995. Subsequently, I was grandfathered in when the North Carolina Nursing and Medical Boards changed the entry level for nurse practitioners to a Master's Degree. Though slow to reenter the Education world, especially as a middle aged adult with a busy work and family life who literally typed with 2 fingers, I completed my Master's Degree in Nursing through the Distance Education program at East Carolina University College of Nursing in 2013. Though at that time I thought I was finished with my formal education, I soon began to realize I wanted to continue my education and re-enrolled at East Carolina University College of Nursing in the fall 2015 pursuing my Doctorate in Nursing Practice (DNP) degree. My area of special interest and subject of my 4 semester scholarly project is Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). NAS is a growing near epidemic problem in the neonatal population due to increased maternal drug abuse and accounts for many of the NICU admissions annually. I am eagerly anticipating graduation from ECU's College of Nursing DNP program in August of 2017.