I started my career in nursing at the accelerated nursing program at Columbia University and graduated as a Family Nurse Practitioner in 2016. Knowing I desired further training, I applied and was accepted to the country's first primary care nurse practitioner residency at the Community Health Center, Inc. in Connecticut. After this year-long intensive residency, I discovered my true passion was in dermatology and sought to receive formal training in this vast specialty.  In 2018, I was accepted as the second nurse practitioner to attend the first nurse
practitioner dermatology fellowship at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC). During this intensive/immersive two-year program, NPs trained alongside the dermatology medical
residents and gained the full scope of dermatology. We attended daily morning lectures on a variety of dermatological topics, participated and presented our own patients during monthly
departmental grand rounds, worked in a clinic with subspecialists who are experts in the field, and also had our own independent clinics that began to expand as we got more comfortable with
dermatology. This program truly made me feel well-prepared and trained in the full spectrum of medical dermatology. I studied and gained my Dermatology Nurse Practitioner Certification (DCNP) upon completion of the program and stayed another year at the URMC. I now work at a dermatology private practice in Jackson Heights, Queens, where I am the only NP and work alongside the owner of the practice, Dr. Casal. I see patients independently and can always rely on Dr. Casal if I have a question about a patient.