At an age when many professionals step away from clinical work, Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft is preparing to begin a new chapter as a physician. After more than four decades as a neonatal nurse practitioner, Zuidgeest-Craft completed medical school in her early 70s and is set to start a family medicine residency in Michigan on July 1, 2026, just days before turning 73 on July 7.
Her journey is not only a personal story of persistence. It also raises larger questions about how doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners are trained in a health care system that has changed dramatically since the traditional medical school model took shape.
Zuidgeest-Craft said she wanted to become a doctor from the age of 7. She grew up in a blue-collar family in Levittown, New York, during the 1950s and 1960s. When she later moved to Lansing, Michigan, to attend Michigan State University, she pursued nursing but continued to hold on to her goal of becoming an MD.
After earning her bachelor’s degree in nursing, she found her professional home in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). While working, she also took premedical classes in the evening. Her path shifted when a new neonatal nurse practitioner program opened in Southern California, offering her a rare opportunity at the time to take on a more advanced medical role in neonatal care.
She completed the program and returned to Michigan in 1981, where her training placed her ahead of many nursing roles then available in her city, Grand Rapids.
When Zuidgeest-Craft returned to Grand Rapids, nurses in her city had not been allowed to place an IV in pediatric or neonatal patients. They also had not been expected to lead the resuscitation and admission of critically ill infants or perform procedures such as intubation, chest tube placement, umbilical central lines, lumbar punctures, and ventricular taps.
Her neonatal nurse practitioner training changed that. The program gave her education in neonatal pathophysiology and hands-on skill development. For four months, she spent every third night in-house on 24-hour call with pediatric residents.
That experience shaped her understanding of patient care. It also helped her see the difference between clinical skill gained at the bedside and the broader scientific foundation provided by medical school.
Zuidgeest-Craft’s delay was not due to lack of ambition. It was life.
After completing her undergraduate degree, she wanted to apply to medical school and began taking additional premedical requirements. She married, had two children, and built her career as a neonatal nurse practitioner.
At 35, after a divorce, she took the MCAT and applied to medical school. Michigan State University granted her an interview, but she had not yet completed organic chemistry, and her scores reflected that. She was told she was a strong candidate and encouraged to finish organic chemistry and reapply.
Around the same time, she met her second husband. They married and hoped to have children together. She planned to attend medical school at 40, but infertility changed those plans. Her youngest child was born when she was 49. By 50, she believed her dream of becoming a doctor was over.
In 2020, Zuidgeest-Craft’s husband survived a life-threatening accident. After the crisis, the couple discussed what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives.
Her husband said he wanted to travel. Zuidgeest-Craft said she still wanted to go to medical school.
His response was simple and supportive: “I will visit you!”
That conversation pushed her to act on a dream she had carried for decades.
At 69, Zuidgeest-Craft applied to St. James School of Medicine’s Anguilla campus. She spent two years on the Caribbean island completing basic sciences while her husband visited and traveled through 14 other Caribbean islands.
She later completed clinical rotations in Chicago, West Virginia, New York, and South Texas. By the end of the journey, she had completed her MD.
Her story stands out because she entered medical school after more than 40 years in advanced nursing practice. Unlike many medical students, she did not arrive with limited clinical exposure. She brought decades of bedside experience, neonatal rounds, self-study, and direct patient care.
Zuidgeest-Craft said medical school taught her a great deal, especially about the difference between being a nurse practitioner and being a physician. She believes there is significant overlap between the roles, but both educational pathways leave gaps.
In her view, a neonatal nurse who later becomes a nurse practitioner can be an excellent provider if their education includes advanced medical sciences. She argued that at least two years of bedside neonatal nursing experience offers learning that cannot be replicated in classrooms.
She also noted that pediatricians and neonatologists follow a longer but less focused path: four years of medical school, three years of pediatric residency, and two to three years of neonatal fellowship, often with a research focus. However, she said they may not gain the same bedside management experience with critically ill newborns that neonatal nurses develop over time.
Zuidgeest-Craft emphasized that neonatal bedside care teaches clinicians how to assess patients who cannot speak for themselves. She compared this skill to a parent’s intuition that something is wrong.
One example she highlighted was feeding intolerance in newborns. A bedside nurse does not only observe how much milk enters the baby’s body. The nurse also notices subtle clinical responses to feeding, which can help detect early signs of serious conditions such as necrotizing enterocolitis.
She argued that medical school and residency do not fully teach this kind of experiential knowledge. In current practice, neonatologists often depend on nurses to alert them when further investigation is needed.
Zuidgeest-Craft’s experience led her to question whether current health care education pathways still make sense.
She argued that medicine is no longer the general practice of the 1940s, yet medical school curricula have not changed enough to reflect the explosion of medical knowledge, evidence-based data, and modern technology.
Her own clinical coursework in medical school covered adult critical care, emergency medicine, surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, and psychiatry. She found the rotations interesting, but not always focused on her long-term expertise in neonatal medicine.
For students aiming to become specialists, she suggested that some parts of training may duplicate prior learning or consume time without improving specialty-specific expertise.
Zuidgeest-Craft will begin her family medicine residency in Michigan on July 1, 2026. She will turn 73 on July 7, 2026.
After decades in neonatal care, she now hopes to contribute not only to patient care but also to conversations about how health care providers are educated.