Nurse Practitioner to Join FirstHealth Family Medicine-Troy

Taressa Bryan, FNP

TROY – Taressa Bryan, FNP, knew from the time she was a little girl that she wanted to do something in the medical field when she grew up. She just didn’t know what.

By the time she reached high school, she had decided on nursing. By the time she had finished nursing school, she realized that wouldn’t be quite enough.

“I wanted to be a more central part of the patient’s care and become involved in their everyday health care,” she says. “I chose family medicine to make a difference for my patients and to develop relationships with my patients.”

Now a family nurse practitioner, Bryan has joined FirstHealth Family Medicine-Troy and will begin seeing patients in the clinic next week. She assumes a position vacated by Christine Cowell McBride, PA-C, who will become a full-time provider in FirstHealth’s Transition Care Clinic program.

“Being a family nurse practitioner has allowed me the best of both worlds: nursing and family medicine,” Bryan says. “I love all areas of Family Medicine, but especially getting to watch the phases and changes people go through. I enjoy getting to see newborn babies for the first time and follow them through childhood and into their teen years, or from teenagers into young adults. I have only been practicing for four years, but I have been able to watch my patients grow and change from different stages of life.”

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Bryan earned her B.S. degree in nursing from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, and her Master of Science in Nursing: Nurse Practitioner Pathway from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City.

She began her nursing career as a registered nurse in acute care, intensive care and emergency room nursing at Unity Health Center in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and was most recently a family nurse practitioner in the Seminole Medical Clinic of Oklahoma Heart Hospital. She and her family became interested in North Carolina after visiting relatives who had relocated to Greensboro.

“We loved the area and started looking at relocating about a year ago,” she says. “Things fell into place earlier this year, and here we are.”

At FirstHealth Family Medicine-Troy, Bryan will work alongside Chrystal Eller, M.D., providing health care for adults and children in Montgomery County and surrounding communities.

“I value the relationships I am able to make with my patients and the trust I am able to instill with my patients,” Bryan says. “They know that I will be there for them whenever they need me. There have been times when all my patients have needed someone to talk to, and I have been honored to do that for them.”

FirstHealth Family Medicine-Troy is located at 522 Allen St., Suite 101, of the Medical Arts Building beside FirstHealth Montgomery Memorial Hospital in Troy. To make an appointment with Taressa Bryan, FNP, or Chrystal F. Eller, M.D., call (910) 571-5510.