By Vanessa Orr

For nearly 30 years, Paula Plympton, ARNP, has seen what it means for parents to have the medical care and support they and their children need from KIDZ Medical Services. As the mother of two premature twins herself, she’s also lived through the experience, making her even more committed to continuing to provide the highest level of neonatal care.

“There’s nothing more reassuring than knowing that you and your children are in the best of care, but it’s a real eye-opener seeing it through the other side, going through NICU with your own children,” she said.

A 1991 graduate of the University of Miami, Plympton began her career in the neonatal ICU at South Miami Hospital with Critical Care Newborn Services. In 1996, she decided she needed a break from bedside nursing and decided to go into the pharmaceutical field.

“Dr. Albert Tano, one of the cofounders of KIDZ, invited me to join their group and offered to send me to Georgetown University to become a nurse practitioner,” she said. “He told me I was going to miss being a clinician providing bedside care and 29 years later, I’m still here. He was right.”

Plympton joined KIDZ Medical—a private, physician-owned multispecialty healthcare organization dedicated to neonatal, pediatric, and women’s healthcare—in 1996 and has watched it grow exponentially, from seven nurse practitioners and five neonatologists to more than 200 clinicians today.

“When I first started out, it was a really tight-knit group, and the physicians were so supportive of us. They provided excellent mentoring, and treated us as colleagues,” she said. “Even now, I’m able to pick up the phone at any time of day or night and say I need help, and they take care of it. It’s priceless to have that support from the staff as well as the senior partners of the group.”

Since 2003, Plympton has worked at Homestead Hospital, a Level 1 hospital that is often the first responder to C-sections, premature babies, surgical cases and more. The staff also stabilizes and transfers high-acuity patients, working with the KIDZ Medical’s transport team. Plympton has seen the Homestead community grow significantly—along with the demand for high-quality labor and delivery and neonatal care—and KIDZ Medical has been working ever since to meet that need.

One of the most rewarding parts of her almost three-decade career, according to Plympton, is that she is now starting to see the second generation of families coming through the hospital doors. “A patient will come in and I’ll realize that I delivered her 22 years ago, and now she’s having a baby,” she said. “What’s even more incredible is when the family remembers you and wants to tell you how well your team did.

“Being a referring hospital, we don’t always get to follow babies as closely as if we were a Level 3 hospital,” she added. “But in the last five years, I’ve gotten to see the circle completed.”

Plympton appreciates that KIDZ Medical has given her the opportunity to have such an incredible career, as well as the flexibility to be a mother to her own three children. “No matter what position you’re in, you’re always encouraged to do more schooling, get more licensing, or start mentoring new practitioners and PAs,” she explained. “They set high goals and then give you the autonomy to reach those goals.

“They also gave me the ability to spend time as a mom; to be really involved in my children’s lives when they were little,” she added of the twins, now 24, and a son, 22. “It’s difficult when a strong career needs so much time, but I feel like we reached the perfect balance.”