Eric McCraney, DNP, MA, FNP-C, ENP-C, NRP, has taken not just one straight career route, but rather a series of overlapping paths that revealed his love for pre-hospital and emergency medicine as well as education and ministry.
McCraney, of Alabama, said he entered college as a nursing student, which offered him a solid career outlook and scholarship opportunities. During his clinical rotations, he remembered seeing nurse practitioners making their rounds at the hospital.
“I had no idea what they were,” he said, but as he talked to nurse practitioners, he thought it may be something he wanted for himself in the future. Ironically, he didn’t enjoy his clinical rotation in the emergency department.
His first job after earning his BSN from William Carey University was floating between telemetry and the ICU, however he was often not needed due to low patient census.
“One weekend, the ER nurse manager said, ‘Are you tired of being sent home?’ I said ‘sure,’” he recalled. “She said, ‘Well I need nurses, so if they send you home, come to the ER.’” After six months and an orientation, he transferred to the ED and loved it this time.
As that was happening, McCraney also hopped on a pre-hospital path. His cousin asked him to accompany him to an EMT basic class he needed to take to work for the area’s volunteer fire department. McCraney realized he loved it and started volunteering as an EMT-basic. Because Alabama didn’t allow RNs to work pre-hospital other than on flight crews, he went to Texas to become a certified paramedic and then returned to home where he continued working in the ED while either working or volunteering on paramedic shifts.
McCraney said part of what he liked about pre-hospital was the autonomy.
“I absolutely love doing the skills. I love intubating. I like things that challenge me,” he said. “It’s not the lights and sirens. I’m not an adrenaline junkie. It’s about helping people and doing the skills you were trained to do to the full scope of your practice.”
Advanced practice was the right next step.
McCraney also learned he loved teaching after taking on a preceptor role at his hospital. When he returned to school for his nurse practitioner program, he took time away from the ED to be an allied health instructor at the high school where his wife worked.
After earning his FNP from University of South Alabama in 2007, he joined the ED at the critical access hospital where his parents were born, and he has been there ever since. That doesn’t mean it’s the only place he works. After enjoying the work precepting and teaching at the high school, he looked for more opportunities to teach and is now a remote adjunct faculty or instructor for several schools including adjunct clinical faculty at University of South Alabama’s dual family/emergency nurse practitioner program.
He also completed his DNP from Frontier Nursing University in 2020.
While working and raising a family with his wife, McCraney traveled on yet another overlapping path. He has been a minister for more than 18 years and he completed his master’s degree in biblical and theological studies at Bellhaven University in 2023.
“There is a great deal of overlap,” he said. “A lot of times, some people look at me as sort of the chaplain of my hospital, and I get a lot of medical questions from my congregation sometimes. It’s interesting.”
McCraney and his wife have three children, and they are fostering three children. He enjoys giving back to his community as well as volunteering for mission trips, including recent medical missions in Honduras and Cuba
“I think it’s important as a nurse,” he said.
