Forsyth native Joy King carries many titles, but most of them serve a singular purpose. The nurse practitioner, adjunct professor and Georgia Nurses Association president-elect is pushing the state’s health care system forward every way she can.
It’s what earned her a spot in Georgia Trend’s “40 Under 40,″ a recognition of the “most successful and civic-minded people in the state.” King’s just getting started.
“I’m crazy,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, explaining why she’s working on her second doctorate. “I don’t know what possessed me to go back. I think I got bored and I was just like, why not?”
King is currently working on a Ph.D. in nursing at Georgia State University. She already has a fellowship in integrative health and medicine from the Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine, master of business administration in health care administration from Western Governors University, doctor of nursing practice and master of science in family practice nursing from Georgia College & State University.
“The time is going to pass anyway,” she said. “Education is something that no one will ever be able to take from you, ever. I do feel like the more educated you are, the patient care gets much better. So I just figured, why not?”
She’s in her third year at GSU, where she’s studying — among other things — overweight and obesity in African American women who live in rural areas of Georgia. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health, Black women face the highest rates of obesity compared to any other group in the United States. Roughly 80% of them are overweight or obese.
When not arming herself with knowledge on how to improve Georgia’s health care, King’s sharing what she knows with nursing students as an adjunct professor at Georgia College & State University.
“I have my students that I’m accountable for posting lectures and they’re responding to emails,” she said. “And then I just have my regular job at (CVS) Minute Clinic. There are so many different things, but they all kind of tie into what I would say is my purpose. I need to help nurses, help patients, help future nurses and nursing leaders. If I can be a champion for anybody, I try my best to do that.”
She’s been a family nurse practitioner for nearly a decade, currently working at the CVS Minute Clinic to care for diverse and underserved populations. Before that, she worked in operating rooms, intensive care units, home health and ambulatory/convenient care. It’s a long history of helping Georgia’s residents that can be sourced back to her childhood, after the unthinkable happened.
“I guess, if I had to go all the way back, part of my inspiration is my dad passed away when I was 10,” King explained. “He was starting to become sicker and sicker.”
From 8 years old until his death, King saw her dad in a hospital.
“He fell victim to a lot of the things that I tend to see on a daily basis with my patients,” she said. “Like, he was a smoker. He wasn’t really overweight per se, but he had a lot of … I guess you would call it central obesity. He had a little bit of a tummy. But we know how detrimental smoking can be. And he was just a really heavy smoker and ended up having a stroke.”
King’s many titles and crucial roles in health care help her to find silver linings in situations.
“You have to look for silver linings in all the bad things so that it keeps you hopeful,” she added. “I felt like he was my best friend. I was able to be exposed to the health care system, and the biggest impact was the nurses that cared for my dad. They stopped to see how we were doing. They always would call me by name. I felt like there is something there. So, from that point forward, I wanted to make that kind of impact on people, on patients.”
Treating patients, teaching students, researching health care — there’s more to King’s story still. She’s also president-elect of the Georgia Nurses Association, where she uses her leadership skills to champion the state’s nurses.
“The nurses of Georgia are holding me accountable,” she said. “I have got to make sure that I get it right. I only get one go at this. I’ve got to get it right. … People reach out to me often and say, ‘I really need your help with this, this and this.’”
“I try my best to answer the call of my nurses throughout the state,” she continued.
Life outside of work moves just as fast as her career. She’s an ultramarathon and ultra-Spartan run competitor. Her record distance so far is 52 miles, which she ran consecutively during a 24-hour World’s Toughest Mudder event. Why? It’s all for fun.
“I meet all kinds of people from all walks of life,” she said.
“You meet some really awesome people out there in the middle of the woods and then you finish the race and then you got the runner’s high going and everything,” she later continued. “It’s definitely something that I enjoy and I just kind of view it as like, I’ve got all these different hats that I wear during the work week, even on the weekends sometimes with GNA, and I just feel like running those races can just be freeing.”
Stress is something commonplace for nurses. Whether it’s violence, burnout or something else, King had advice for nurses facing challenges in the workplace.
“Join us,” she said. “We are the largest professional nursing organization in the state, but we need more nurses. The more nurses that we have in GNA, the more likely we are to get a lot of that legislation passed through and signed into law so that (we) can improve whatever the concern is.”
“We’re working really hard to get everything addressed,” she added. “Come join us. Come be involved.”
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