Tampa nurse practitioner helps others turn healthcare expertise into businesses

Jessica Chung built her career around a simple conviction: Healthcare professionals should not have to choose between caring for patients and having control over their careers.

The Tampa nurse practitioner founded J.C. Healthcare & Associates, a direct primary care practice, in 2019. A year later, as the pandemic upended the healthcare industry, she launched the International Business Association for Nurses to help fellow nurses and other medical professionals open practices of their own.

Photo by Mark Wemple

The idea was not part of some carefully mapped-out business plan. It grew organically after Chung documented the process of opening her practice on social media.

“A lot of people reached out to basically ask how I did it and how I could help them,” Chung says. “It came out of my own journey in terms of building and opening a practice as a nurse practitioner.”

Through the association’s private-practice master classes and other programs, Chung has since helped healthcare professionals nationwide launch clinics, medical spas and healthcare service companies.

Chung grew up in Queens, New York, and traces her interest in nursing to her grandmother, a home care registered nurse whom she often accompanied on patient visits during summer vacations and holidays.

“I spent a lot of time with her when she would work,” Chung says. “I saw the stability and the ins and outs of her career, and so that’s what interested me.”

Chung earned an associate degree in nursing from New York City College of Technology in 2009 and worked as a nursing home charge nurse and home care case manager in Brooklyn before moving to Tampa. She later earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Utica College, a master’s degree from South University and a Doctor of Nursing Practice from Samford University. Her clinical experience spans emergency, postpartum, primary, pediatric, adult and geriatric care.

Chung offers aspiring practice owners a candid assessment of entrepreneurship: It requires patience, persistence and an ability to navigate inevitable swings between good and difficult periods.

“You have to understand that this is a long-term commitment as a business owner, and you have to be in it for the long haul,” she says. “You’ll have good days, bad days. You’ll have good seasons, bad seasons.”

Chung credits her mother, a Jamaican immigrant who raised her as a single parent, with teaching her resilience. She also considers her pastor, Rashidi Collins of New Life Tabernacle in Tampa, a mentor. It was Collins who encouraged her to pursue her doctorate when she was adamant she was done collecting degrees.

Her grandmother, who emigrated from Jamaica and earned a bachelor’s degree in her 40s, remains an “honorary mentor,” Chung says. She died in 2019, six months before Chung completed her doctorate.

“Just her life — coming to this country as an immigrant, getting her bachelor’s degree in her 40s — definitely inspired me,” Chung says.