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Most practitioners assume the only honest path into functional medicine is to leave conventional medicine behind, and Katie Creedon has spent nearly two decades proving that assumption wrong.
Katie is an adult nurse practitioner with deep roots in geriatric care, a program director for a VA nurse practitioner residency, and the founder of New England Functional Wellness. On this episode of Functional Medicine for Real World Impact, host Tracy Harrison sits down with Katie to talk about what functional medicine for nurse practitioners looks like when it is built gradually, intentionally, and without abandoning the clinical foundation that makes the work credible.
Katie’s path has not been a straight line. She kept her footing in conventional medicine while building something new on the side, and that deliberate pace turned out to be exactly right for her life, her family, and her sense of professional credibility. She talks about what finally pushed her to act, why the mosaic career model works better for most practitioners than the all-or-nothing narrative suggests, and what she has learned about keeping care simple when the functional medicine toolbox makes complexity feel like progress.
Brain health in midlife sits at the center of Katie’s clinical focus. After years of watching dementia affect patients and families in nursing home settings, she became convinced that dementia prevention deserved far more attention than conventional care was giving it. Her perspective on healthy aging functional medicine is grounded in real clinical experience, and she is candid about the challenges of bringing that message to patients who are not yet thinking about their brains and to colleagues who remain skeptical of the field.
If you are navigating an integrative medicine career transition and wondering whether you have to choose between stability and alignment, Katie’s experience offers a more honest picture of what the path can look like.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Introduction to Functional Medicine for Nurse Practitioners
01:48 Katie Creedon's Background in Geriatric Care
05:53 How a Grandmother Shaped a Career in Aging
10:07 When Conventional Medicine Stops Being Enough
14:10 Finding Functional Medicine and Reigniting Clinical Purpose
18:16 Integrating Functional Medicine Into a Conventional Role
23:16 Building a Practice Gradually Without Burning It All Down
27:11 Why Both Conventional and Functional Medicine Matter
32:32 Mentoring New Nurse Practitioners With a Root Cause Lens
37:00 The Best and Worst of Functional Medicine in Practice
44:19 What Starting a Business Teaches You About Yourself
49:45 Dementia Prevention and Brain Health in Midlife
56:16 Letting Your Why Drive Your Courage
57:41 Advice for Practitioners Ready to Realign Their Careers
Connect with Katie Creedon:
Visit the New England Functional Wellness website
Follow New England Functional Wellness on Instagram
Connect with Katie on LinkedIn
New England Functional Wellness Linktree
Email Katie at katie@newenglandfunctionalwellness.com
SAFM Links:
Take SAFM’s 10 CME course - The Essential Gut Deep Dive
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