Julie Spencer AFMC – Practitioner Transformation

Congratulations to SAFM student and AFMC-certified practitioner Julie – a Family Nurse Practitioner specializing in women’s health and urology. Since joining SAFM, Julie was able to start an entrepreneurial practice based on Functional Medicine principles, while also bringing the impact of functional medicine into her regular conventional practice. 

We are celebrating Julie’s success in joining a cadre of empowered, progressive health professionals helping her patients actually get well and stay well using the principles of Functional Medicine. An important bonus: Julie found the professional fulfillment she was craving!

As you will hear in this excerpt of a conversation between SAFM’s Tracy Harrison and Julie, her motivation to change began when she attended a course on Pelvic Pain and Nutrition – this sparked Julie’s interest in looking beyond her conventional training and opened the door to a shift in thinking about the origins of her patient’s dis-ease. 

The search for answers for her patients eventually led Julie to SAFM where she got the training she needed to help her patients in life-changing ways.

Check out this video for an inspiring story of professional growth through a change in the way Julie practiced medicine.  Get inspired to go beyond the obvious to help your patients and clients return to truly resilient health and vitality. 

In Julie’s own words: “I’m a family nurse practitioner. I’ve been in Western medicine for over 20 years, and I have loved learning so much more about the functional aspect and really getting to the root cause for your patient. And really not just ‘Here’s a pill,’ but let’s talk about this and let’s really try to figure out why things are the way they are. It’s amazing how much change we can make with small little things. 

And there’s now I think a bigger clientele who are really seeking this information and really wanting to know more about why they feel the way they do versus, ‘Here’s a pill.’ I think it’s filling a void of not knowing how to help patients. I’ve been helping the same group of patients basically for 18 years. And there was a void in how to help these patients with their bowel. That’s not really what I do in urology, or need to do, but it’s what I’m doing now and I’m making a difference.”

Here’s to a new paradigm in health care and Functional Medicine’s powerful answers to the most complex patient challenges.

This is one of a series of videos celebrating the success stories our students share. Follow our Instagram to explore our Student Spotlight features for more inspiring practitioner transformation stories.