After years working in clinical practice in rural Arizona, NP Kirsten Wister had a vision for her own practice that would allow her to offer integrative medicine and treat poor and needy patients. Like some other rural states in the US, the state of Arizona allows NPs to run a practice without a physician's oversight, as well as admit patients to some acute and sub-acute facillities, and prescribe medication. She and host Mimi Secor talk about how she opened her practice in Sierra Vista, 75 miles south of Tucson, in March 2011, and the patients who were invested in having this practice in the community to the extent that they staffed it voluntarily, and the value she's found in collaborating with physicians despite the fact Arizona law does not require it.
