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10/26/2022 08:30 AMIf you ask Philip Martinez Jr., Ed.D, MSN, APRN-BC, CCRN-CMC what he does, he’ll tell you he’s a nurse, first.
“In the first class of every course that I teach, I start by telling my students ‘I am a nurse.’ I just stop and let that soak in,” says Philip. “It doesn’t matter where you are in administration; or what you’re doing: in the end, I am a nurse. All the other stuff is just initials after a name, and things that we’ve done. At its core, I will never stop being around patients. It’s just who I am.”
Specifically, he’s an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) in the Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Middlesex Hospital. As a board-certified acute care nurse practitioner, Philip holds specialty certifications as a critical care registered nurse and a subspecialty certification in cardiac medicine from the American Association of Critical Care Nurses.
The North Branford resident, who grew up in Branford, is also currently Quinnipiac University (QU) clinical assistant professor of nursing and director of the accelerated nursing program and the acute care nurse practitioner track. Philip joined QU in September 2021, following nearly 15 years with Yale School of Nursing (YSN), where he was a lecturer and served as director of the Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing (GEPN) program.
As of Jan. 1, 2023, Philip will begin his first term as elected chair of the volunteer-based national Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) board of commissioners. Philip was first invited to join CCNE as a commissioner in 2018 and is currently completing his term as board secretary.
As an autonomous arm of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, CCNE serves as an accrediting agency ensuring the quality and integrity of baccalaureate, graduate, and residency/fellowship programs in nursing.
In a press release issued by QU, Philip states, “I am incredibly honored and grateful for the opportunity to serve as chair of the CCNE Board of Commissioners. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues at CCNE and our constituent programs, promoting the quality of the nursing education, fellowship, and residency programs pursuing accreditation, and thereby, supporting the profession of nursing."
A Life in Nursing
After graduating from Branford High School in 1991, Philip attended University of New Haven (UNH) to pursue his bachelors degree in criminal justice and law enforcement science.
“When I got out of high school, I thought I wanted to play baseball, of all things,” says Philip, who played for BHS from 1987 to 1991. “I also thought I might, at some point in my career, be a police officer or join the FBI. That’s how I picked my major. But I figured out, as I was going along, it just didn’t feel like the right career for me.”
With one semester left to graduate, Philip left UNH to take a few years off – and then met a person who gave him some great advice.
“I met a nurse in a restaurant I was working in, who convinced me to go back [and] into nursing. So I went back to school, finished my undergraduate degree and got into the Yale School of Nursing. It was amazing. If I hadn’t met him, I don’t know if I would even be a nurse.”
After earning his BS from UNH in 1999, Philip enrolled in YSN’s GEPN program, earning a certificate in nursing in 2002, and MSN as an acute care nurse practitioner in 2006. In 2015, Philip earned his Doctor of Education degree from Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU).
Philip says he decided to pursue teaching thanks to some good advice and encouragement from one of his Yale instructors.
“When I graduated with my master’s in nursing, one of my preceptors, who was still a mentor of mine, said to me, ‘You’re coming to teach for me.’ I said, ‘I’m a brand-new nurse, I can’t teach for you!’” says Philip, who served as an APRN at Yale-New Haven Hospital from 2006 to 2008.
“’She said, ‘No, you’re going to teach for me,’” he recalls.
Philip began lecturing at YSN in 2006.
“And five years later, she said, ‘You’re going back to school to get your doctorate, because you’re going to become the director of the program.”
He did both.
A little over a year ago, Philip completed his YSN career in order to join QU in his new role. He’s excited to note the new QU acute care nurse practitioner program now has its first students enrolled.
“An acute care nurse practitioner primarily works in the intensive care unit or the emergency department, or in a subspeciality like lung pulmonary medicine or infectious disease – so working with acutely ill or chronically ill patients who are in an acute phase of illness,” Philip explains.
At Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, Philip is on the job at night covering for the hospital’s pulmonary and critical care medicine group.
“We have pulmonologist physicians in the daytime who cover, and then I cover for the group at night — because I never sleep!” Philip says, laughing.
Being an active practitioner helps Philip to bring that world to his students.
“I have a practice as an acute care nurse practitioner and I teach; and one always informs the other,” he says. “I can bring to the classroom things I’m seeing — obviously not patient-specific things — but if I see, for example, a patient with sepsis – I can talk about it in a way that seems real to the students, and that’s what they love. They love to feel that connection between what they’re learning in class and what we’re doing out in practice. So, it’s always informed my teaching.”
His many accomplishments and full schedule may sound like a heavy lift, but Philip said he has his wife, Kelly, to thank for helping to allow him to pursue a career he loves. The couple has two children who are busy with activities in the community and attending North Branford public schools.
“I’m so thankful for my wife, because she’s sacrificed so much to give me the time and the opportunity to do this. It’s not easy, and it’s a lot of work. She does so much with our kids.”
While people do actually ask him if he ever sleeps, Philip says he knows the effort he’s contributing is what he is meant to do.
“I am so blessed to be a nurse. That random encounter with that nurse has given me everything. It’s given me purpose, it’s given me direction, success in life. And so I want to give back, as much as I can. I look for any and all opportunities to try to give back. I just love this profession. There’s no other way to say it.”