Fleeta B. Okolie
Nurse Practitioner, Coach, & Entrepreneur
Dr. Okolie realized she wanted to be a nurse when she signed up to be a candy striper at a local hospital in high school. She obtained her Bachelor’s of Nursing from the College of New Rochelle in 1996 and began her career on medical-surgical and telemetry units before working in the float pool on a rapid diagnostic unit. She completed her Master’s of Nursing from Seton Hall University in 2008 to become an adult nurse practitioner and later worked in occupational health caring for hospital staff and pre-employees. Since 2016 Dr. Okolie has been working as a nurse practitioner for the national on call team with Optum where she utilizes telehealth to treat the nursing home population, as well as providing home visits throughout New York and New Jersey. Dr. Okolie completed her Doctorate of Nursing Practice in healthcare systems leadership from Chamberlain University in 2020.
In Dr. Okolie’s role as a virtual nursing home nurse practitioner, she was the provider tasked with calling the families of nursing home residents who had been diagnosed or passed away from COVID-19 during the pandemic. During the height of the pandemic, before vaccines and treatment or quarantine protocols had been established, she worked with nursing home staff to navigate and monitor patient care until more consistent protocols emerged. After enduring such an emotionally taxing year, she decided to launch Nurses Know It All in 2021, a platform to coach, inform, and inspire busy nurse moms with self care support and professional development.
View Dr. Okolie’s Nurses You Should Know video here, hear her on the Not Just a Nurse podcast, or follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Clubhouse.
Sources
We sourced the above information from LinkedIn and directly from Dr. Okolie.
Learn More
To learn more about inclusion in nursing and be part of the national discussion to address racism in nursing, check out and share the following resources:
Know Your History
- Nursing CLIO to engage with historians and scholars committed to deep work around historical accuracy in healthcare and nursing.
- American Association for the History of Nursing to attend monthly webinars on topics of nursing history, view the calendar here.
Examine Bias
- NurseManifest to attend live zoom sessions with fellow nurses on nursing’s overdue reckoning on racism or to sign their pledge.
- Breaking Bias in Healthcare, an online course created by scientist Anu Gupta, to learn how bias is related to our brain’s neurobiology and can be mitigated with mindfulness.
Support & Advocate
- National Coalition for Ethnic Minority Nurse Association to stay engaged with topics relevant to nurses of color.
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