Feature Alum: Tom Bartol

1982 B.S.N.
Family Nurse Practitioner, Richmond Area Health Center, Richmond, Maine

"Being a nurse practitioner has opened up a world of opportunity."

"Eskimos in Alaska." "The people of Sierra Leone." "Refugees in Central America." Looking back through 20 years of daily journals, Tom Bartol is reminded not so much of where he's lived and who he has nursed as what patients have taught him and how he got to where he is. "I learned as a Wright State student to take advantage of opportunities," he says. "Being involved and meeting people became as important as getting a degree and opened up a new way of looking at life."

Today, as a family nurse practitioner and certified diabetes educator in rural Maine, Bartol considers himself more of a health care consultant than healer. "It's my patients who do the really hard work to make their lives better."

Best Advice: "What matters are not the mistakes we make, but how we recover from them."

Favorite Quote: "Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever." Gandhi

Last Book Read: Hurry, Inchworm!, Milda Vizbar, to my 11-month-old son, Luke