Are You Interested in Interagency Government Care?
Learn all about the newest AANP Community from Co-chair Michelle Peacock.
This May, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners® (AANP) announced the launch of the Interagency Community. The community is the newest of the 32 AANP Communities and was created for nurse practitioners (NPs) working for government agencies to join together, share their experiences and work to strengthen the NP role. One of the co-chairs of this new community is Michelle Peacock, MSN, FNP-BC, FAANP, who spoke to AANP about finding a home in health care, joining the armed forces and utilizing her experiences to advocate as a leader for her patients.
“Trying to Figure Out Life” and Discovering Patient Care
After graduating from high school, Peacock began work as a patient care technician in the intensive care unit— and was surprised to learn she found the work invigorating and impactful. “I didn’t think I would do well, but my first day working there I just absolutely loved it. I came home, and I remember just laying on my bed exhausted, and I thought: ‘My heart is so happy — I think I’ve finally done something that makes an impact and helps others,’” she remembers. Her next breakthrough came in joining the Army. “I was kind of trying to figure out life, and so then I decided to join the Army. And the Army at the time — I joined the Army reserves, to be clear — had a program where you could go in and be a medic, and they would send you to school to be a licensed practical nurse (LPN).”
Enlisting was the right choice for Peacock, who states that the Army “was a great environment for me. You were rewarded for doing the right thing [...] I did basic training, I was the leader of the cycle, I went to combat medical school. Then I went to LPN school in Fort Lewis (Washington), and I really liked it.” To help pay for school, Peacock worked in the evenings at a children’s hospital and attended class in the morning. Her financial burden was lifted when she was awarded a full scholarship from the Army (called a Green to Gold scholarship) in which you begin as an enlisted soldier but graduate as an officer. “When you’re done, you commission as an officer in the Army nurse corps, and that started my journey traveling the world as an Army nurse.”
On her third deployment overseas, which took her to Afghanistan, Peacock was working as part of a FAST team — which she says to “think of as a tent where you do triage and emergency surgery, and then you evacuate soldiers to a fixed facility.” As the only emergency room nurse on this deployment, she says she “learned a lot,” and was also mulling her next move. “My mom wanted me to come home at the time, and I wanted to return to nursing but in an advanced role.” She entered the University of New Mexico to study, where she would meet faculty member Carolyn Montoya, PhD, CPNP, FAANP — who would later sponsor Peacock in becoming an AANP Fellow. “During that program, I was able to learn from a great number of professors that were really invested in family practice, women’s health and being an NP.”
Servant Leadership
For Peacock, who was inducted as a Fellow this year, leadership is sometimes hard-won but crucial. “I would say that each of my leadership experiences has built up to my job today, and each time is an opportunity to learn. It hasn’t always been a fun journey, but each time I do it, I like to show everyone that it doesn’t matter what my title is — what matters is the outcome of taking care of the people that I work for, and the organization and my patients. I have a personal philosophy that leaders are leaders because of how they choose to take care of the people in their community, not necessarily because of the initials behind their name,” she says.
“I believe in what’s called ‘servant leadership,’ and I feel like it’s my job to take care of others, and to build whatever community I’m in. There’s always been situations that occur where you have to rise to the level of being a leader. During COVID, seeing clinicians burnt out and scared and nervous really made me say, ‘OK, I need to really focus on how to help them with their burnout and make a safe environment, so they are in turn safe so that they can take care of patients.’”
Stronger Together
With this background as an NP and a veteran — and having taken on numerous leadership positions in the interim — Peacock felt a call to co-chair AANP’s Interagency Community. “This is a very unique community,” she says. “When we look at the bigger picture, federal agencies employ a large number of NPs. And not all federal agencies are the same, but we have like goals and missions. In order to complete those missions, we do have to understand health policy on a different level, because federal health policy has different layers, like an onion.”
With a common framework and a common goal — removing barriers between NPs bringing quality health care to patients — the next step is to get NPs working in governmental settings to share their expertise. “When I saw this community, I saw it as an opportunity to get all federal agencies at a table with the people who are making a difference — and those are our NPs.” says Peacock. “If we all can come together in a common language and understand what it means to work in a federal agency and how to navigate that federal agency, we could potentially improve health policy at the federal level — if we combine those efforts, together.”
Join AANP’s Interagency Governmental Care Community
The Interagency Government Community is one of 32 AANP Communities dedicated to specialties including the recently added ophthalmology, otolaryngology and more. Communities are only open to AANP members, and are designed to support discussion, document sharing, collaboration and networking.