WORKING -- SUSAN WERGLES

SHE IS

Providing medical care to the sick

LONG ROAD

Wergles, 43, is a nurse practitioner for the Edinger Medical Group’s

Fountain Valley office.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Long Beach in 1975,

she became a registered nurse and soon after, began working in the

emergency room at UCI Medical Center. Not unlike many in the medical

field, Wergles says that she has always loved working with people. But

the journey she chose to take was not necessarily based on finding the

quickest means to an ends.

“I switched from the hectic emergency room work to working in

administration as the trauma service coordinator at UCI because once

again, I was studying at Cal State Long Beach,” Wergles said. “I was

lucky I had a fairly nice boss who would work with me so I would have

time to also work on school.”

MASTERING THE FIELD

In 1993, Wergles graduated from the nurse practitioner’s program at

Cal State Long Beach with a master’s degree and was ready to begin her

new career as a nurse practitioner.

“I needed my master’s degree because it is now necessary for a nurse

practitioner to have that,” Wergles said. “It is like that because if you

want to bill for Medicare, you not only have to have a master’s degree,

you have to be nationally certified to bill for certain things. It also

just gives you more credibility.”

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

Nurse practitioners are primary care health-care providers. But one of

the things that they are actively lobbying for is to be listed as

primary-care providers with all insurance companies; something in which

they currently don’t have.

Wergles said that nurse practitioners have been around for some time,

however, she added, even with their steady emergence, which has come

about in the last 10 years, some people still need to be educated as to

what nurse practitioners do.

“We do physicals, histories, order diagnostic testing, make diagnoses,

order treatment, write prescriptions; basically, we do every thing that a

doctor would do,” Wergles said. “Often times, we provide the health care

in the rural areas that physicians won’t go to.”

THE PAYOFF

A year after grabbing her master’s degree and searching for work,

Wergles finally found a position as a nurse practitioner in 1994 with the

Edinger Medical Group and has been there ever since. Wergles adds that a

lot of urgent-care facilities will hire nurse practitioners.

“We can practice independently without having a physician on site,”

Wergles said. “If for any reason we need a doctor present, then we just

call one.”

Although her days can be hectic, they are always enjoyable. Wergles

says that she does everything from keeping track of chronic diseases to

doing a lot of urgent care, which she added can get hectic, but because

of her emergency room background, is hard for her not to love.

“I thrive on interacting with the patients,” Wergles said. “As a

registered nurse, especially when working in the emergency room, you

don’t have the time to teach, where as nurse practitioner, you do. I love

teaching them (patients) and taking care of them and that’s probably why

I became a nurse practitioner.”

Story by Torus Tammer; photo by Carlos Hilgado