Post-Master's DNP Nursing Leadership

When the private practice she worked in for nearly a decade was taken over by a new health care group, nurse practitioner Ines Zemaitis, DNP ’19, found herself at a crossroads.

“I did not like how things changed when they took over,” she said. “Patients don’t want to be treated like numbers.”

Zemaitis quit her job and considered teaching full time, but opted instead to earn her nursing doctorate. She chose Quinnipiac’s DNP program for its philosophy on delivering holistic, patient-centered care.

“Our values matched,” Zemaitis said.

Even as she settled into life as a student, Zemaitis couldn’t resist the call of her profession. She began seeing patients again out of rented rooms in a colleague’s office. As her caseload increased, it became clear that she’d need her own space.

In 2017, the mother of three and full-time doctoral student took a leap of faith and opened her own practice, Connecticut Primary Care and Wellness, PC, in Middlebury.

“I’m still not quite sure how I did it,” she said, laughing.

Zemaitis was able to apply everything she was learning in courses about executive level leadership in the public health sector, from creating a business plan to managing staff and finances.

“My assignments reflected what I was actually doing at the time,” Zemaitis said.

In addition to DNP, Zemaitis can add CEO to her list of titles. She organized her practice into a corporation, naming fellow nurse practitioners who share her vision to her board of directors.