Ja’el (pronounced like the initials “J.L.”) Powers is in her 13th year of nursing. Throughout her career, she has worked in every specialty/department except for an ICU: a cardiac catheterization lab (a.k.a., a “cath lab”), an ER, an OR, a cardiac rehab, on the floor and as a travel nurse. But it was during her […]a’el (pronounced like the initials “J.L.”) Powers is in her 13th year of nursing.
Throughout her career, she has worked in every specialty/department except for an ICU: a cardiac catheterization lab (a.k.a., a “cath lab”), an ER, an OR, a cardiac rehab, on the floor and as a travel nurse. But it was during her time in cardiac rehab that she had the epiphany to change her focus and become a psychiatric nurse practitioner and create her own practice, Powers Mental Health.
“In outpatient cardiac rehab, I recognized a patient I’d cared for in the cath lab,” she told Keys Weekly. “He had chest pain one morning, drove to the ER to play it safe, then suddenly he’s being rushed to the OR for emergency open-heart surgery. I still can see his dejection and pain when he broke down in tears, this strong, attractive, successful middle-aged man. He said to me, ‘You don’t prepare us for this. You fix our heart, and you send us on our way … but you don’t tell us we’re still going to be scared when it’s all said and done.’ That was the day I knew I needed to make a change. I am not alone in the realization that health care is treating the body yet neglecting the brain.”
She studied to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner, who, like a psychiatrist, evaluates, diagnoses and treats patients with mental disorders…