Gift Guide for Nurse Practitioner School Graduates (2024)

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After the years and hours spent training to become an advanced practice nurse, there are so many ways to celebrate a recent nurse practitioner school graduate’s journey. Although graduation is just the beginning of their life’s adventure into becoming an integral part of the healthcare system, a new graduate has already accomplished so much!

Nurse practitioner graduates are celebrating their commitment to a broader set of responsibilities in healthcare that can sometimes border on doctor-ish. NP grads are celebrating the accomplishment of choosing a population focus and pursuing advanced skills, knowledge, and clinical judgment to help them best serve this population. Those who just graduated from a program are celebrating how their new education has improved their patient care, and may also be celebrating the fact that they don’t have to be in school for a while.

The best gifts you can give are those that demonstrate the same level of thought, care, and kindness that NP grads will practice with their patients on a daily basis. This gift list is designed to help give you thoughtful, useful, and needful gifts that will help an NP graduate to celebrate and to succeed in the career they have worked so hard to advance through their schooling efforts.

Small Affordable Gifts

Nurse’s Pocket Notebook

Despite all the advances in technology over the years, sometimes the best way to jot down notes and reminders is in an old-school pocket notebook. Etsy has a wide selection of notebooks custom-designed for nurses in ways that are whimsical or practical. As an added bonus, you can also provide a nurse-themed pen to accompany the notebook. Stepping outside of your big box store and shopping on Etsy also makes sure you’re supporting small businesses.

4-in-1 3D Printed Custom Design Pen

4-in-1 pens are commonly listed as being an essential part of what lives in an NP nurse’s bag. While plastic and disposable 4-in-1 pens are available everywhere, the place where you want the pen to last the longest is in the nurses’ hand (not in a landfill). A long-lasting and refillable 4-in-1 pen can be a gift that continues to give throughout an NP’s career. While most 4-in-1 pens are all ink, this particular model swaps out the color for a 7mm mechanical pencil.

Ethical Coffee

For NP graduates about to enter the healthcare field, coffee is often an ingredient for successfully navigating hectic, busy, and sometimes long shifts. And while cafeteria coffee is usually free, it’s not always very tasty.

If the NP you know is a coffee snob, give them the gift of the best possible coffee on earth—that which doesn’t use pesticides or destroy lives or the planet. Whether you offer the NP graduate you know beans, a single cup, or a gift certificate to a local, fair-trade, organic coffee shop, the gift of robust flavor that delivers an ethical energy boost is one that most NP grads will be happy to receive.

Hand Lotion

For their safety and the safety of patients and colleagues, nurse practitioners can wash their hands up to hundreds of times per day, depending on their role in the workplace. Although alcohol-based sanitizing gels cut down on how dry NP hands can become, hand lotion is still something that any NP graduate can appreciate.

While hand lotion is also something provided for free in the workplace, choosing a boutique fragrance-free lotion appropriate for any medical setting makes something essential into a treat.

Face Masks for Nurse Practitioners

Face masks have become some of the most important accessories in the last couple of years due to the impact of Covid-19. To stop it from spreading in public places, including hospitals, clinics, and colleges, gifting NP’s with a face mask can help them keep themselves and everyone around safe. Teepublic has a wide range of masks for NP’s that are seven inches wide and four inches tall having a polyester exterior with a soft microfiber lining for added comfort and improved fit. They are assembled and printed in the USA and are machine washable.

Books for NPs

I Wasn’t Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse by Lee Gutkind

For the NP school graduate interested in seeing the struggles and resultant growth of a career as a nurse practitioner, this anthology of nursing narratives has a breadth and depth of moving wisdom, experience, and insight. Penned by nurses at all stages in their career, this could be an excellent gift to illustrate to a new NP how to find joy and meaning in a career where there can be struggles due to things like bureaucracy and burnout.

Nurse Practitioners Business Practice & Legal Guide, 7th Edition by Carolyn Buppert

Whether the NP graduate you know is going to join a hospital or strike out alone, Carolyn Buppert’s guide is important to any new or current NP. Revised for 2021, the guide includes teachable moments from malpractice cases, emerging issues in health policy, guidelines for prescribing controlled substances and opioids, issues with EHRs, issues with HIPAA, and more. Those graduates considering the pursuit of a DNP may also find this guide super helpful.

Anatomy of Writing for Publication for Nurses by Cynthia Saver

For the academically and research-inclined NP graduate, this guide by Cynthia Saver is a comprehensive resource that helps NPs to go from idea to published article. In addition to pushing NPs toward a completed manuscript, this book covers collaboration with other healthcare authors, how to avoid predatory publishers, converting a dissertation or capstone to a published article, book review writing and submission, different publishing formats, and more.

Conspiracies of Kindness: Thƒue Craft of Compassion at the Bedside of the Ill by Michael Ortiz Hill

This work by Michael Ortiz Hill challenges caretakers to deeply examine how to cultivate and implement the craft of compassion while working with sick patients. A call to deep inner transformation, Ortiz Hill proposes a shift away from the crushing of compassionate impulse in healthcare to an opening into relationship-based caring that comes from a place of showing up authentically to a bedside. This could be a deeply important text for a new NP contemplating how to show up spiritually to their work.

How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman

While it may be controversial to recommend a book on doctors as a graduation gift for an NP, the reality is that an NP’s career is going to be intertwined with that of a physician. While there is an overlap in training methodologies, physician training and NP training prepare healthcare professionals to deliver services in ways that can be wildly different and even in conflict.

This book can help newly graduated NPs to cultivate some awareness of the inner workings of doctor decision-making so that they can work effectively with the doctors who are integral to their work.

Subscriptions, Memberships, Conferences, and Courses

A Membership to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP)

Graduating from a degree program is just the beginning of an NP’s professional journey, and membership in a professional organization like AANP is how an NP can continue to grow, thrive, and learn throughout their career. Through membership, the NP grad in your life will become a part of a professional network of NPs, gain access to continuing education, hold subscriptions to academic NP journals, and more. If the NP you know is graduating with a specialty, you can also consider a membership to a specialty association (e.g., Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses).

Alumni Association Membership

If your NP graduate had a positive experience of community and education at the university where they were trained, helping them stay connected to this community through an alumni association membership can be a thoughtful and useful gift. In addition to the continued networking opportunities that a gift like this makes possible, alumni association memberships often come with CE opportunities, discounts, events, publications, and other ways for a graduate to stay connected.

Massage Membership

Being an NP is a really physical and often stressful job. In anticipation of a newly graduated NP sinking into all the rigors of this healthcare position, a massage membership gives the gift of physical and emotional relief. You can give the gift of massage from chain-style operations like Massage Envy, or you can contact your NP’s favorite massage practitioner to look into memberships or packages.

Continuing Education Courses

School is not the end of an NP’s formal pathway through training. To maintain licensure and board certification, and to keep up with all the changes in the science and practice of patient care, all NPs must complete a certain amount of continuing education throughout their years as a provider. Chat with the NP graduate you’d like to support about where their professional curiosity lies, and offer to sponsor a continuing education course from NPACE, APEA, Barkley & Associates, Fitzgerald Health Education Associates, or AANP.

Sponsor Conference Attendance

In addition to providing a wide array of continuing education opportunities, conferences are a way for NPs to connect with their professional communities, and learn how best to advocate for this growing profession.

There are general conferences that bring together NPs from all disciplines and conferences that bring together NPs who work with specific populations. In the age of covid, some conferences are online and some are in person. Speak with your recent NP graduate about their schedule and their comfort level, and book them a ticket to the conference of their choice.