Jill Schramm/MDN Minot native Susan Collins, nurse practitioner, stands in an exam room in the clinic she opened this spring.

Susan Collins has served the medical needs in her hometown for many years. From paramedic to registered nurse to nurse practitioner, she has taken different roles in looking out for the health of the Minot community.

This spring she ventured down another new path, opening a family practice clinic in the Subway building on South Broadway. Triple C Clinic opened in April in space vacated by another nurse practitioner clinic that relocated.

Collins previously had been seeing patients at Sanford Health’s walk-in clinic in Minot. She had worked for the clinic eight years and found herself at the point in her career at which she could think about retiring. Rather than contemplate that idea, she decided to open her own practice.

“I am going to work as long as I can,” she said. “I love my job. I love my patient contacts.”

Having her own clinic enables her to focus on her patients and continuing education, she said.

Because nurse practitioners and physician assistants are able to practice independently, Collins can write prescriptions, perform diagnostic tests and provide other patient care without physician supervision.

“I’m not big on meds. I do think there are other ways to handle problems than just prescribe a drug, and I tell that to my patients,” Collins said. She favors appropriate diets and exercise when possible to keep conditions in check before turning to medicines.

Her clinic employs a laboratory worker and can offer patients laboratory testing and electrocardiograms (EKGs). Collins said X-ray capability is being developed. Already credentialed with some major insurers, including Medicare, she is working on additional insurance credentialing and expects to be set up with electronic medical records by mid-July.

Her receptionist and office manager also is bilingual in Spanish and able to assist patients who are more comfortable in that language.

Collins calls herself a jack of all trades, which was helpful in rebuilding her house after the 2011 flood. As a primary care provider, she also has to exercise a range of skills in caring for patients from newborns to the elderly.

“I see a lot of people with long term problems – cardiac, diabetes is a big thing, hypertension, high cholesterol,” she said. “It’s just a really broad spectrum.”

She particularly enjoys working with children and has a knack for gaining their trust.

Currently, the clinic is taking patients both by appointment and walk-in, including for youth sports physicals. Office hours are Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Fridays from 8 a.m. to noon. After hours, calls are forwarded to and answered by Collins.

“I think my first responsibility is to my patients. I want to be available to them. I don’t care what time of the day or night it is,” she said.

“I’m always around town – unless I can get somebody to go fishing with me,” she laughed. “And I don’t care if I catch. I just like to go. I’m not really big on fish. I don’t eat them. I will catch them, I will clean them and I will cook them.”

Collins believes independent practitioners have a lot to offer patients and can provide better one-on-one primary care than reliance on a convenient care clinic for one’s health needs. The ability to get to know her patients and stay on top of their care is important to her.

“I don’t think there’s anything better than the patients – just that individual contact,” Collins said. “From the time I started with community ambulance, that patient contact was just my niche.”

From her youth, Collins had been fascinated by emergency and medical shows on television. However, she chose to pursue a degree in business administration from Minot State University and gained work experience with Kmart and the city recreation office.

Eventually, she was drawn back to her first love and enrolled in an Emergency Medical Technician program at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Minot. One of few women in the male-dominated emergency field at the time, she trained in advanced life support while at Community Ambulance and went on to work for the ambulance service as a paramedic for 20 years. She owned EMS Resource Center with a colleague, teaching emergency medicine.

“It was a wonderful time in my life,” Collins recalled. However, she reached a point at which she felt it was time to move on.

Collins enrolled in the University of Mary nursing program, driving back and forth between Bismarck and Minot to remain available for ambulance calls. She worked as a registered nurse in Trinity Health’s emergency room for five years. While working for Trinity, she enrolled at Concordia University in Wisconsin and obtained her hands-on training locally to earn her master’s degree as a nurse practitioner.

She worked as a nurse practitioner for three months in Williston, but the lack of housing there during the oil boom prompted her to return to Minot, where she joined Sanford Health.

Collins said her years in medicine have provided her with colleague relationships that remain important to her now as a solo practitioner. She also can refer patients who need specialized care to any care center they desire.

In addition to medicine, Collins has been employed at various jobs over the course of her work career, starting at age 14 as an insert stuffer, placing the comics section in The Minot Daily News. Her father, who worked for the Daily News, required his children to gain work experience early in life.

Collins attributes her gregarious, outgoing, people-oriented personality to her father, Carl Clayon Collins, for whom the Triple C Clinic is named. Collins once served on the Minot City Council. His daughter and Susan’s sister, Sandra Collins-Roggenbuck, followed him as a council member. Carl Collins no longer is living but Susan Collins looks after and shares a home with her elderly mother.

With solid ties to North Dakota and Minot, Collins said operating her own clinic in her hometown feels right at this time in her life.

“Being here is just so rewarding,” Collins said.

(Prairie Profile is a weekly feature profiling interesting people in our region. We welcome suggestions from our readers. Call Regional Editor Eloise Ogden at 857-1944 or call 1-800-735-3229. You also can send email suggestions to

eogden@minotdailynews.com.)