The Book of the Lamp — Read free with Kindle Unlimited · Kindle eBook: $0.99 · Paperback: $5.75.
🙋 Patient, family member, or neighbor? The first section below explains, in plain words, how your nurse can help.
🧑⚕️ Nurse or health professional? The professional framework now lives at FlourishingNursing.org. The professional material further down this page is being moved there over time.
◐ In development
🌱 Flourishing Nursing
Flourishing Nursing is the nursing philosophy behind much of Kitchen Monk™.
In plain words: it is nursing that cares about your whole life, not only your diagnosis. It helps people move beyond simply managing illness toward the conditions that help them live well: health, dignity, connection, purpose, and meaning. Helping people cultivate the conditions to flourish.
👀 Your nurse may notice something important that does not fit neatly inside a diagnosis.
😴 Maybe you are not sleeping.
🛒 Maybe you cannot afford groceries.
🫂 Maybe you are lonely.
🤲 Maybe caregiving is exhausting you.
🦵 Maybe walking hurts.
💊 Maybe nobody has explained your medications in a way that makes sense.
📄 Maybe you have been given excellent advice that is simply impossible to follow in your life right now.
Flourishing Nursing asks nurses to notice those things too.
❓ Three questions
Healthcare usually asks, “What is wrong, and how do we treat it?” Prevention asks, “How do we keep illness from starting?” Both matter a great deal. Flourishing Nursing adds a third: “What would help you live as well, safely, and meaningfully as you can, right where you are?”
🌻 Flourishing is not perfection
You can flourish while living with a disability, a chronic illness, cancer, grief, money worries, or getting older. Flourishing might look like comfort, being heard, having a say in your care, staying connected to people you love, finding a little joy, or simply having enough support. Flourishing Nursing meets you where you are. It never blames you for your health.
🩺 What a Flourishing Nurse might do
- 🥕 Connect you with food resources when groceries are hard to afford.
- 💊 Work with your care team to fit a medication plan around two jobs or a changing schedule.
- 🤝 Help you find people and community when loneliness is weighing on your health.
- 🔗 Explain how sleep, food, movement, stress, and medicines affect one another.
- 👣 Help you choose one realistic next step instead of handing you twenty instructions.
- 🪫 Notice when a family caregiver is running on empty.
Your nurse doesn’t replace your doctor, dietitian, pharmacist, therapist, physical therapist, or social worker. Often, your nurse helps all of those pieces fit together.
🌱 And because the nurse needs a garden too, Flourishing Nursing also cares about the people who care for you.
The goal is not a perfect garden. The goal is a living one.
👣 A gentle next step: at your next visit, you might tell your nurse one thing that makes health hard right now.
General education, not personal medical advice. Please talk with your own clinician about your health. In an emergency, call 911 or your local emergency number.
🎓 For nurses, educators, and researchers
The full professional framework (definition, nursing ethics and scholarship, evidence, what is still being developed, and a research agenda) lives at FlourishingNursing.org. Below, you’ll find the presentation, community, and nurse leaders that shaped it.
Celebrating Chef AJ
Good food. Shared laughter. A moment worth keeping.
Chef AJ, thank you for the joy, encouragement, and love of whole plant foods you have shared with me. This memory from TrueNorth Health Center in 2023 still makes me smile.
Nathanael & Chef AJ · A carotenoid-scan moment · Tap the video to play or pause.
Thank you, Chef AJ, for being part of this chapter of my flourishing journey. Here’s to nourishing food, human connection, and making room for joy.
Stay connected with Kitchen Monk™ & Flourishing Nursing™
KEEP THE JOY GOING · CHEF AJ’S OWN YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Keep watching Chef AJ
Enjoy the recorded celebration below, then explore Chef AJ’s own uploads, newest first.
On YouTube, choose Play all to start at the newest available upload and continue through the collection. Use the playlist menu to choose another video; turn shuffle off to keep the order.
The collection opens on YouTube because its current player restricts playback on other websites. Continuous playback depends on YouTube, video availability, and your browser. YouTube updates the uploads list as new public videos become available.
Our vision: make nourishment visible — read Nathanael’s story
Our vision: make nourishment visible
“An ultimate goal of Flourishing Nursing™ and Kitchen Monk™ is to help everyone enjoy God-made whole plant foods so consistently that their nourishment is reflected in their carotenoid scores.
Thank you, Dr. Alan Goldhamer, for making the scanner available to help people learn about their carotenoid status. My hope is that more healthcare organizations and certified lifestyle medicine clinicians will explore carotenoid screening as a routine nutrition measure alongside traditional vital signs. That’s this lifestyle medicine nurse practitioner’s vision.”
Nathanael Elijah Smith, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, DipACLM
Skin carotenoid scores can help estimate carotenoid-rich fruit and vegetable intake. They do not measure overall health or prove someone’s complete dietary pattern; this vision is not a claim that carotenoid screening is an established vital sign. Read the research.
More about this memory
This is what Flourishing Nursing™ aims for
This joyful 2023 moment with Chef AJ captures what Flourishing Nursing™ aims for: nourishing food, compassionate encouragement, human connection, and room for joy. We want people—and the nurses who care for them—to have the support they need to flourish.
Watch the video and read the TrueNorth 2023 story →
A personal memory and an expression of our aims. The scanner reading is one part of the story, not a measure of whole-person flourishing.
The American Nurses Association’s expansion and our whole-team welcome
Read the American Nurses Association’s Licensed Practical Nurse/Licensed Vocational Nurse announcement and our welcome to Certified Nursing Assistants →. The American Nurses Association’s membership rollout and our own inclusive learning community are distinct; responsibilities and qualifications remain role-specific.
Explore Food for Life, verified nurse educators, and the official program recording →
🎓 ▶ Watch official American Nurses Association ethics learning — recorded Provision 1
Publisher: American Nurses Association / American Nurses Enterprise. Related ethics education, not a Licensed Practical Nurse/Licensed Vocational Nurse membership announcement. Exact original American Nurses Association video ↗ · More official American Nurses Association ethics recordings and source details →
🥦 ▶ Watch the official Food for Life program introduction — recorded
▶ Open the on-page publisher player on Flourishing Nursing. Kitchen Monk’s native embed does not render this publisher’s player; the companion player provides the watch experience.
Publisher: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. This is a program overview, not a recipe cook-along, a particular nurse’s recent post, or a live broadcast. Exact original Food for Life player ↗ · Educator profiles, source dates, and access details →
A developing, nurse-led framework built around one question: How can nurses help people flourish while building conditions in which nurses can flourish, too?
Flourishing Nursing is still taking shape. It is not an accredited program, a certification, or an endorsed model, and it has no published outcomes yet. We’re sharing it now so nurses and colleagues can help shape it and decide how it should be tested.
Continue the Journey Together
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★ Featured Presentation ★
🧭 Moving Nursing Forward: The Journey
Nursing Can Build the Future of Lifestyle Medicine
Presented by Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM, to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s Nursing Member Interest Group on August 24, 2026. The full journey, in 30 slides: how nurses can move Lifestyle Medicine from information to experience.
🌅
SLIDE 01
Nursing Can Build the Future of Lifestyle Medicine
“Sometimes the future begins when we hear the voice that has been calling us all along.”
🏥
SLIDE 02
Healthcare Became Great at Rescue—But Needs Upstream Nursing
“We became skilled at catching people after they fell.”
🌊
SLIDE 03
Lifestyle Medicine Begins When We See Lives, Not Just Diagnoses
“The farther upstream we traveled, the more we began seeing lives.”
🩺
SLIDE 04
Lifestyle Medicine Is Calling Nursing Home
“Lifestyle Medicine may be calling nursing home.”
💚
SLIDE 05
Patients Need Companions, Not More Shame
“What would healthcare look like if walking beside people became the model?”
❓
SLIDE 06
Information Is Not Enough—People Need Practice
“Information can point toward the trail, but people need somewhere to practice.”
📚
SLIDE 07
Nursing’s Roots Already Point Upstream
“The trail markers have been here for generations.”
🌊
SLIDE 08
Moving Nursing Forward Means Returning to Nursing’s Roots
“Eventually the path leads to a wonderfully ordinary room: the kitchen.”
🍎
SLIDE 09
The Kitchen Shapes Health Every Day
“A kitchen can influence someone every day for seventy years.”
🌿
SLIDE 10
The Kitchen Is the Doorway; Flourishing Is the Destination
“The kitchen is the doorway; the destination is flourishing.”
🚪
SLIDE 11
Healthcare Can Begin With Warmth and Welcome
“Come in. That might be where healthcare begins.”
🤝
SLIDE 12
No Patient Should Walk the Journey Alone
“Each person carries part of the map.”
🐝
SLIDE 13
The Whole Nursing Family Must Move Together
“Imagine the whole nursing family walking in the same direction.”
👩⚕️
SLIDE 14
Nurse Coaches Can Guide Community Connection
“Not commander. Connector. Not gatekeeper. Guide.”
🔎
SLIDE 15
Innovation Starts by Connecting What Already Exists
“Innovation sometimes begins with attention.”
🌻
SLIDE 16
Lifestyle Medicine Becomes Real When People Experience It
“Lifestyle Medicine becomes lived experience.”
🚶
SLIDE 17
Movement Becomes Medicine When We Walk Together
“Sometimes movement is medicine. Sometimes companionship is medicine too.”
😴
SLIDE 18
Rest Is Biology—Sleep Must Be Protected
“Rest is not laziness. Rest is biology.”
🫶
SLIDE 19
Healing Begins When Shame Becomes Learning
“I am not failing. I am learning.”
❤️
SLIDE 20
Belonging Is One of Healthcare’s Most Powerful Medicines
“Relationships may be one of the oldest medicines humans have ever known.”
👥
SLIDE 21
Shared Medical Appointments Bring the Paths Together
“The group brings something medicine cannot prescribe: each other.”
🌟
SLIDE 22
The Future Is Not Heroes—It Is High-Functioning Teams
“The future is people walking together.”
💵
SLIDE 23
Sustainability Keeps the Journey Alive
“Dreams need infrastructure.”
🤖
SLIDE 24
Artificial Intelligence Should Give Nurses Time for Humanity
“Let machines become better at machine work, so humans have more time for human work.”
🗺️
SLIDE 25
A Connected Map Can Become a Community of Health
“The map begins to look like a community capable of flourishing.”
🌎
SLIDE 26
Every Community Can Build Its Own Path
“The framework travels. The community chooses the path.”
🇺🇸
SLIDE 27
America 🎆250🎇 Calls Nurses to Build More Health
“Not only more healthcare. More health.”
🔥
SLIDE 29
The Hive Grows When Every Nurse Contributes
“Many small acts of care become something larger than any one of us.”
🌙
SLIDE 30
The Journey Begins When One Nurse Raises a Hand
“The journey has just begun.”
The End. Or maybe… the beginning.
From bedside to community · From information to experience · From disease management to flourishing · From telling… to walking beside
Shared by the presenter. This presentation is not an American College of Lifestyle Medicine publication and does not imply American College of Lifestyle Medicine endorsement of Kitchen Monk or Flourishing Nursing.
Dedicated to Dr. Michael Klaper — a priceless mentor
Moving Nursing Forward · A dedication accompanying Nathanael Elijah Smith’s presentation to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Nursing Member Interest Group monthly meeting.
I dedicate Moving Nursing Forward to Dr. Michael Klaper, a physician and longtime mentor whose encouragement has stayed with me since my nurse practitioner internship at TrueNorth Health Center in 2018 and through my later service as Clinical Administrator.
Before leaving TrueNorth, he asked me to make sure I would still be there when he returned. As I remember his words: “Nathanael, I want you to make sure you stay here. Please, when I return.”
Mentors like that are priceless.
When we reunited at The Plantrician Project’s Power of the Plate conference—an experience I wholeheartedly recommend—I told him that his work, Moving Medicine Forward, had inspired me: “It’s time we move nursing forward, too.”
We shared a fist bump beside an abundant whole-food, entirely plant-based buffet. I could enjoy practically everything. For me, that meal demonstrated how nourishing, generous, and joyful health-promoting food can be.
That experience captures a conviction at the heart of this movement: we should strive for the best nutrition and health possible while meeting each person where they are. We listen to their story, respect their choices, understand their circumstances, and partner in the changes they are willing and able to make.
Our commitment to nurse coaching
Moving Nursing Forward embraces the full breadth of American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Corporation’s professional nurse coaching framework: ethical foundations; the nurse’s reflection, growth, and self-care; a collaborative coaching process; compassionate communication, therapeutic relationships, healing environments, and cultural care; and education and research.
In practice, this means honoring the person’s authority over their own life, exploring readiness, developing goals together, supporting action, evaluating progress, and coordinating care. The complete official competencies—not an abbreviated checklist—serve as our reference:
This is an independent movement; referencing American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Corporation’s framework does not imply its endorsement or confer certification. This dedication is the presenter’s personal acknowledgment and does not imply endorsement by Dr. Klaper or the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
Dr. Klaper, thank you for moving medicine forward—and for inspiring me to help move nursing forward.
No patient should walk the journey alone. Neither should the nurse.
—Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM
▶ Play the Moving Nursing Forward presentation · See the slide collection on Kitchen Monk
About the language on this page: phrases in the presentation such as “movement is medicine” or “belonging is one of healthcare’s most powerful medicines” are reflective, metaphorical language, not clinical claims, and they never replace indicated medical treatment. Where the titles of other people’s books or presentations below mention preventing or reversing chronic disease, those are their published titles, quoted to identify their work; they are not claims made by Kitchen Monk.
👥 Who it’s for
Nurse practitioners, registered nurses, Licensed Practical Nurses and Licensed Vocational Nurses, certified nursing assistants and nursing assistants, nurse coaches, nursing students, and international colleagues, working alongside dietitians, health coaches, community health workers, culinary partners, and others. It doesn’t assume any one country’s healthcare system.
◐ IN DEVELOPMENT — NOT CURRENTLY OFFERED
🏛️ Welcome to the American College of Flourishing Nursing and Nurse Coaching
The American College of Flourishing Nursing and Nurse Coaching is an emerging professional nursing community and the roots of Flourishing Nursing: the soil where ideas are tested, people are connected, and the work can grow.
Please note: The American College of Flourishing Nursing and Nurse Coaching is an educational program concept in development. It is not an accrediting or certifying body, and it is not currently an accredited degree program, certification, licensure pathway, fellowship, or continuing-education offering unless specifically stated otherwise. Joining the conversation today means community participation, not a professional credential.
🌎 All of Nursing Is Invited to Flourish
Flourishing Nursing shares the spirit of the Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation™ vision: a healthier nursing workforce helps build a healthier nation. On June 27, 2026, the American Nurses Association’s Membership Assembly, which governs the organization that leads Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation, voted to open national membership to licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses for the first time.
We celebrate that. Every nurse, from Licensed Practical Nurse and Licensed Vocational Nurse to Registered Nurse, nurse practitioner, nurse coach, and student, has a place in helping the world flourish.
🩺 For Licensed Practical Nurses and Licensed Vocational Nurses: The American Nurses Association is still setting up how the new membership will work; American Nurse Journal reports the amendment takes effect July 1, 2028. Check the American Nurses Association’s announcement for updates. Some state nurses associations already welcome Licensed Practical Nurses and Licensed Vocational Nurses, so your state association is a good place to ask today.
Kitchen Monk and Flourishing Nursing are independent and are not affiliated with or endorsed by the American Nurses Association or Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation.
🌱 The roots of Flourishing Nursing 🌱
Flourishing Certified Nursing Assistants
If Flourishing Nursing is a garden, nursing assistants are its roots: closest to the ground, often unseen, and nourishing everything that grows.
Just as the American Nurses Association has opened its doors to Licensed Practical Nurses and Licensed Vocational Nurses, Kitchen Monk hopes to welcome certified nursing assistants, nursing assistants, and care aides around the world into the Flourishing Nursing movement.
Nursing assistants often spend more time with patients in their daily routines than anyone else on the care team, and they are often the first to notice when something has changed. Working within their scope and alongside nurses, they are well placed to help patients practice and reinforce the everyday habits that shape health: eating well, moving, resting, and staying connected.
Supporting those habits can help advance the Quadruple Aim of healthcare: better patient experience, better population health, lower costs, and a healthier care team. And because the nurse needs a garden too, Flourishing Certified Nursing Assistants are invited to flourish themselves, not only to help others do so.
Flourishing Certified Nursing Assistants is an invitation into a developing community, not a certification, credential, or training program. It does not change any nursing assistant’s scope of practice, which is set by their state or country and their employer.
📘 Recommended reading
📘 Code Calm: A Nurse’s Guide to Surviving and Thriving
“Who nurses the nurse?” sits at the heart of Flourishing Nursing. That’s why we’re glad to share Code Calm, a new book from Nurse Blake (Blake Lynch, BSN, RN) and a team of nurse contributing authors. It offers honest, practical support for nurses who feel stretched thin, so they can care for themselves the way they care for their patients. The book benefits the Nurse Support Network.
Shared as a recommendation. Kitchen Monk is not affiliated with the book, its authors, or the Nurse Support Network.
🏮 Lampkeepers of lifestyle medicine
🏮 Communities and Programs That Light the Way
Some of the nurses who inspire Flourishing Nursing work quietly, in the spirit of 🥷 Florence Nightingale: building communities, teaching classes, and walking beside people one step at a time. These are organizations and programs that nurse leaders like them have helped build and carry forward.
- 🌲 Live Lifestyle Medicine (Eugene, Oregon): free community classes on nutrition and food as medicine, plus grocery tours, community walks, potlucks, and cooking demonstrations, supported by the nonprofit Eugene Plant Based Providers. Classes are taught by Dr. Charlie Ross, DO, a physician board certified in lifestyle medicine who has practiced in Oregon for more than 40 years, and Scott Wagnon, PA-C.
- 🌿 National Health Association: our primary recommended educational resource for plant-based living, practical food education, publications, videos, community and events. Some resources require membership or payment.
- 🥗 Complete Health Improvement Program: a long-running, group-based lifestyle program built on whole plant foods, movement, rest, and stress management.
- 🩸 National Diabetes Prevention Program: a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–recognized lifestyle change program for people at risk of type 2 diabetes.
Shared with gratitude. Kitchen Monk and Flourishing Nursing are independent and are not affiliated with or endorsed by these organizations, programs, or people.
★ A light along the trail ★
⭐ Celebrating Joanne Evans, MEd, RN, PMHCNS-BC
Nurse, educator, author, and one of the SHEROES moving nursing forward
For years, Joanne Evans has shown what it looks like when a nurse leads the way in plant-forward health, prevention, and education. Her work with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and with nurses around the world is a living example of the heart of Flourishing Nursing: we are not merely asking nursing to take part in the future of healthcare. Nurses are already building it.
🗓️ Milestones along her trail
- 🥦 2017: After Joanne presented on plant-based nutrition to nursing colleagues at George Mason University, 19 nurses tried a plant-based diet for 21 days with her weekly support, as reported by the Physicians Committee. She was lead author of the program’s write-up, “A Plant-Based Nutrition Program,” in the American Journal of Nursing (March 2017).
- 📗 Author: Cultivating Seeds of Health with Plant-Based Nutrition, sharing the stories of nurses who teach food as medicine (featured below).
- 🎙️ May 4, 2022: Featured guest speaker for the Physicians Committee’s Nurses Nutrition Network, where a recording of her conversation is shared.
- 🌍 July 2023, on the world stage: Gave a presentation titled “Engaging Nurses to Utilize Plant-based Nutrition to Prevent and Reverse Chronic Disease,” along with work on nutritional psychiatry, at the International Council of Nurses Congress in Montreal (July 1–5, 2023). The International Council of Nurses reported that more than 6,000 nurses from 126 countries attended.
Nurses deserve to be seen. Nurses deserve to be celebrated. Nurses deserve a meaningful voice in prevention, nutrition, lifestyle medicine, culinary medicine, community health, and the transformation of healthcare.
When a nurse is lifted up, nursing is lifted up. When nursing is lifted up, patients, families, communities, and healthcare itself can flourish.
Shared with gratitude and admiration. Kitchen Monk and Flourishing Nursing are independent and are not affiliated with or endorsed by Joanne Evans, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or the International Council of Nurses.
🌱 Plantspiration for nurses
📗 Cultivating Seeds of Health with Plant-Based Nutrition
Nurses Share Educational Approaches to Prevent and Reverse Chronic Disease, by Joanne Evans
If Kitchen Monk had a companion bookshelf, this book would be near the front. Joanne Evans shares how plant-based eating changed her own health, then gathers the stories of nurses who made the same change and now teach it to patients and communities. It’s a seed-by-seed picture of what nurse-led food as medicine can look like, and it pairs naturally with the kitchen-first spirit of Kitchen Monk.
We call what Joanne offers plantspiration, a word we borrow with gratitude from Stefanie Ignoffo, founder of Plantspiration®, a Chicago-area nonprofit that brings lifestyle medicine education and plant-based coaching to individuals and communities. Stefanie has been a personal health coach to Kitchen Monk’s founder. Plantspiration like theirs helps move nursing forward, near and far.
Shared with gratitude. Plantspiration® is a registered trademark of Plantspiration NFP Inc. Kitchen Monk is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Joanne Evans or Plantspiration®.
Food as Medicine · Nursing as Cultivation · Community as the Garden
🍳 From Knowledge to the Kitchen
Nutrition science can tell us why food matters. Education can tell us what changes may help. But flourishing requires something more: the confidence to actually live it.
That is why Kitchen Monk and Flourishing Nursing are inspired by educational models such as the Food for Life classes from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Designed by physicians, nurses, and registered dietitians, Food for Life brings nutrition science into the kitchen, turning information into practical skills, shared meals, community, and hope.
What inspires us most:
- 🔬 practical nutrition education that translates evidence into everyday choices
- 🧑🍳 cooking demonstrations and hands-on culinary learning
- 🥦 whole-food, plant-forward approaches to prevention and chronic-disease risk reduction
- 💪 building skills and confidence rather than simply handing out instructions
- 👥 supportive group learning that makes food education enjoyable, social, and realistic within ordinary life
People rarely need another handout telling them to “eat healthier.” They need someone to walk into the kitchen with them and show them how. For Kitchen Monk, food is never just a list of nutrients or restrictions. It is where education becomes practice, where families gather, where culture is expressed, and where prevention becomes something you can taste. Kitchen Monk isn’t here to replace excellent programs like this one. We want to learn from them, amplify them, and build nursing-led pathways alongside them, together with dietitians, culinary professionals, nurse coaches, community health workers, physicians, and families.
🪔 From The EVERgreen Chronicles™
The lesson was never meant to remain inside the textbook.
It had to reach the cutting board.
The soup pot.
The family table.
The community room.
And finally, the life of the person learning to flourish.
With gratitude to the Food for Life instructors and nurse leaders who create space for nurses to help carry this work forward.
Inspired by, not affiliated with: Food for Life is a program of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Kitchen Monk and Flourishing Nursing are independent and are not affiliated with, partnered with, or endorsed by Food for Life or the Physicians Committee.
🍽️ Pull Up a Chair at The Flourishing Table
Kitchen Monk’s full framework for turning food education into skills, community, and flourishing: Learn → Cook → Taste → Practice → Share → Connect → Sustain → Flourish.
🪔 The 🥷 Florence Nightingales of our day 🪔
🙏 With Gratitude to Tammy and Cody
With gratitude to Tammy and Cody for their leadership, service, and continued work in helping nurses participate meaningfully in nutrition education, plant-based health, and the Food for Life community. Their work represents the kind of collaborative leadership that helps move nursing forward.
🌱 Tammy Robertson, RN, BSN
Registered nurse, certified Food for Life instructor, and founder of Planted Into Wellness, teaching plant-based cooking, culinary medicine, and lifestyle medicine. Tammy serves as co-chair of the Physicians Committee’s Nurses Nutrition Network, helping gather nurses around nutrition science and practical food education.
🥣 Cody Stubbe, MSN, RN
Registered nurse for nearly two decades, nursing instructor, and certified Food for Life instructor since 2019. Cody founded Wholistic Dish, bringing whole-food, plant-based cooking and lifestyle medicine into colleges and healthcare settings, and hosts Nurses Nutrition Network gatherings alongside Tammy.
Nurses do not merely reinforce health education after someone else provides it. Nurses can be educators, facilitators, coaches, connectors, innovators, advocates, and leaders in their own right.
Shared with gratitude. Kitchen Monk and Flourishing Nursing are independent and are not affiliated with or endorsed by Tammy Robertson, Cody Stubbe, the Nurses Nutrition Network, Food for Life, or the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
🧩 What it brings together
The framework draws on the six pillars of lifestyle medicine and asks how each one shows up in five places nurses work.
🌲 Six pillars
- 🍎 Nutrition
- 🚶 Physical activity
- 🌙 Restorative sleep
- 🌊 Stress management
- 🤝 Positive social connection
- 🛡️ Avoiding risky substances
📍 Five places they matter
- 🛏️ Patient care: practical support that fits real lives
- 🪴 Nurse wellbeing: who nurses the nurse?
- 🎓 Education: teaching skills, not only facts
- 🏘️ Community partnerships: kitchens, gardens, schools, faith and civic groups
- 🏥 Health systems: making the healthier path easier to take
🎒 What a session should leave you with
1️⃣ One action you can take, 🤝 one partner to take it with, and 📏 one way to learn whether it helps.
🦸 SHEROES: the people who move nursing forward
Flourishing Nursing celebrates seven roles people play in helping others flourish: Supporters, Healers, Educators, Responders, Organizers, Empowerers, and Systems leaders. Nurses lead, and families, caregivers, community health workers, and culinary partners belong here too.
📋 Where it stands
On August 24, 2026, Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM, presented “Nursing Can Build the Future of Lifestyle Medicine” to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s Nursing Member Interest Group. Following that presentation, he is developing the concept further as a proposed workshop that Lifestyle Medicine Centers might consider in the future. No workshop has been approved, scheduled, certified, sponsored, or endorsed by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine or any other organization.
◇ FUTURE VISION — NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
🔭 Looking ahead
We strive for Flourishing Nursing to one day grow into a reimbursable lifestyle medicine program, so that nurse-led lifestyle care can be part of how healthcare is paid for, not an optional extra. Flourishing Nursing is not reimbursable today, and there is no timeline for that yet.
Others have shown the path is possible. Dr. Dean Ornish spent years building the evidence that led Medicare to cover the Ornish Reversal Program under a new benefit category, Intensive Cardiac Rehabilitation, in 2010. It was the first time Medicare covered a program of comprehensive lifestyle changes.
Named with admiration. Kitchen Monk and Flourishing Nursing are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Dr. Ornish or Ornish Lifestyle Medicine. “Ornish Reversal Program” is that program’s own name.
🙌 How you can help
- 💬 Tell us what would make this useful in your setting.
- 🔍 Offer to review draft materials or help design an evaluation.
- 🗺️ Add yourself to the Community Map as a clinician, so we can see where interest exists.
Continue the Journey Together
Join the Kitchen Monk™ free community on Facebook. No purchase required, no perfection required.
Flourishing Nursing is educational and professional-development content. It is not a clinical service and does not replace individual medical care. Written by Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM · Last updated October 2, 2026.
🪔 Nursing Leadership & Workforce Development
Explore Kelly Freeman’s public work in workforce development, Lifestyle Medicine education, medication safety, restorative sleep, and nursing education—and the leadership lessons that helped sharpen Flourishing Nursing™.
🪔 Nursing Leadership & Workforce Development
Explore Kelly Freeman’s public work in workforce development, Lifestyle Medicine education, medication safety, restorative sleep, and nursing education—and the leadership lessons that helped sharpen Flourishing Nursing™.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” 
