If you’re a nurse or nurse practitioner searching for a functional medicine certification program, you’re not alone. More and more RNs and NPs are seeking meaningful ways to deliver root-cause, whole-person care - and functional medicine speaks directly to that calling. But as the number of programs offering a “certification” grows, so does the confusion about what those credentials actually mean. And I'm getting a ton of questions on this subject, so...... Let’s clear things

Functional Medicine’s Promise—and Its Problem Functional medicine has changed the way many of us think about health. It’s upstream, it’s root-cause, and it finally acknowledges what we as nurses have known all along: healing is about the whole person, not just a disease code. Patients leave functional medicine offices feeling heard in ways they never have before. They finally have a provider asking about their sleep, their stress, their nutrition, their story. But here’s the

Originally published in October 12, 2022. Updated November 8, 2025 by Dr. Brigitte Sager, DNP, IFMCP, Founder & CEO of the Institute for Functional Nursing One of the most common questions I get asked regarding practicing functional medicine as a nurse is about scope of practice, and for good reason! It is a confusing topic, and we do not want to put our hard-earned licenses at risk! I first created and taught the Functional Medicine for Nurses  program to help RNs and NPs

This article was first published July 19, 2022 and updated November 8, 2025 by Dr. Brigitte Sager, DNP, IFMCP — Founder & CEO of the Institute for Functional Nursing (IFN). The Call to Heal Again In recent years, countless nurses have changed specialties, left the bedside, or questioned their calling altogether. The pace of modern healthcare, endless charting, and production metrics have left many of us wondering what happened to the art of nursing. I hear it constantly—from