Michael E. Zychowicz, second from left, shows first-year nursing students Gordon Johnston, Uche Okam and Karly McLeod, life-saving techniques in the school's Discovery Lab. Photo credit: Jared Lazarus

Durham, NC - Baseball, girls, camping, fishing and skiing: Michael Zychowicz's interests in high school were not academic. But it was an appreciation for variety that set the New York native on a course toward a career in nursing practice and education.

The change came after a friend enticed him to volunteer for an ambulance service. "Taking care of folks who had physical injuries caught my interest," said Zychowicz, the new faculty director of the School of Nursing's Adult Nurse Practitioner Program. From there Zychowicz took an emergency medical technician course and did a rotation in an emergency room.

"I spent time with a guy who was a nurse in the ER and thought, wow, this is a cool job. It's exciting, it's interesting and there's science and technology involved. It was one of those 'ah-ha' moments," he said, which led Zychowicz to pursue an associate's degree in nursing and work in intensive care units and emergency rooms. Five years later, in 1995, he graduated from Plattsburgh State University with a bachelor of science degree in nursing.

Then a serendipitous happening: "A friend's dad who was a government contractor asked me if I would run a medical clinic on Wake Island," he said. He spent a year on the Pacific Ocean island operating the clinic with a physician. The two provided health care for the entire population, which varied from 300 to several thousand people, including dignitaries, government workers and military contractors.

During that time he befriended the physician, a proponent of lifelong learning who planted the seed for Zychowicz's doctoral work. "Spurred on by the expanded role that I had while I was on the island," Zychowicz said he returned to New York and earned a master's from Syracuse University to become a nurse practitioner (NP).

Although he settled into a job at an orthopedics practice in Syracuse, he moved to Newburgh when his mother became ill. "The first position I could find," he said, "was as an educator at Mount Saint Mary College. They were looking for someone to be a nurse practitioner faculty member. I needed a job, they needed me."

Zychowicz, who holds a doctor of nursing practice degree from Case Western Reserve University, said he initially didn't think he would pursue a career in education.

"I didn't have a full grasp of the expanse of the nurse educator role," he said. But after teaching for a while and finding a clinical practice position in orthopedics, "I found that I enjoyed the blend of teaching students and seeing patients," he said.

At Duke, Zychowicz is teaching pathophysiology and physical assessment and coordinating the Adult NP primary care residency. "The encouragement and support Duke faculty receive to pursue scholarship, practice, teaching and research attracted me," he said.

Zychowicz, who lives in Hillsborough with his wife, two-and-a-half-year-old son and four-week-old daughter, said he and his family are fitting in well. "Most of the folks in our neighborhood are not from here, so we're all in the same boat," he said.

He said he doesn't yet know how he'll become more involved in the Duke community, but he is ready. "Duke has one of the nation's top orthopedic surgeon programs and is innovative. What I'd like to do is start the first orthopedic nurse practitioner program in the country at Duke. It would be great to implement that innovation."