Tracey A Hessert, APN

Tracey Hessert, nurse practitioner, has deep experience in pain management. She is putting her knowledge to work with AtlantiCare Pain Management. “We have so many tools and techniques that can really make life better,” she says. Tracey has personal experience with chronic pain. She has battled fibromyalgia, a spectrum of painful symptoms with unknown causes. “In my case, I exercised my way out of it. Exercise is one solution for pain, the reason we work closely with physical and occupational therapy,” she says. Exercise also helped her beat cancer and manage the pain associated with it. She ran the New York marathon, 10 days before a double mastectomy. “That means a lot to my cancer patients,” she says.
\nBoard certified by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, she earned her master’s as an adult nurse practitioner at University of Pittsburgh and her bachelor’s in nursing from Rutgers University, Camden. She is a graduate of Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, where she majored in communications. For more than two decades, she has worked in primary care, pain management, psychology, urology, emergency and trauma. She has been part of the AtlantiCare family since 2019. She also worked in communications and public relations before nursing school.
\nThat experience equipped her well. “With my communication experience, I can talk to people. With my psychology background, I can figure them out. With my nursing training, I help them feel better,” she says. Her pain management approach also includes anti-inflammatory medications, electronic stimulation, patches, creams and ointments. “We can also inject agents directly into the affected area to reprogram nerves or calm the muscles. We use nerve blocks. Acupuncture and biofeedback also play a role,” she says.
\n“Although we cannot always eliminate pain, we can almost always make it better. And we help the patient build coping skills. Few adults live pain-free. We all develop ways to deal with it. Psychological care is a big part of pain management,” she says.

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