Paradigm Care
Tampa, Florida
In 2016, Art Zimmet founded Paradigm Care, a company which contracts flight nurses to help assist its clients to travel safely and securely worldwide on commercial airlines, with one purpose in mind: to help others. Zimmet’s background in healthcare came not from experience as a nurse but instead from his experience as a lawyer.
After graduating from Florida State University College of Law in 2008, Zimmet primarily focused on medical and nursing home malpractice lawsuits. While he always felt he was helping the client, his lack of positive impact in improving the healthcare system troubled him. “I wanted to help more people than I had the means to. Once I realized my goals were no longer meshing with my career, I knew that I needed to build a company with those objectives in mind,” Zimmet said.
Those objectives include hiring the best possible flight nurses to travel with clients. While Paradigm aims to hire licensed ICU or ER nurses with at least two years of experience, those holding a Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing (BCEN®) Certified Flight Registered Nurse (CFRN®) credential go to the front of the line. Zimmet first learned about the CFRN credential during the research phase of establishing Paradigm, but recognized immediately what value it would bring to his new company.
“Obtaining the CFRN credential shows that a nurse has already gone above and beyond the call of duty. They are viewed as thought-leaders in the air medical industry – sharing information, starting discussions and helping new nurses learn more. Those are exactly the type of people I want working with me,” he said.
Those objectives also included helping to build a company culture with a quote in mind from medical missionary Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell: “The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room here on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of this world is not ‘to have and to hold’ but to ‘give and serve.’ There can be no other meaning.”
Zimmet’s philosophy is that of “servant leadership,” which essentially flips the typical top-down pyramid and instead puts the needs of others first by helping employees develop and perform as highly as possible. Keeping steadfast to his mission statement, Paradigm currently contracts four nurses holding a CFRN credential, but Zimmet expects the number to grow. Once a nurse completes 10 flights with the company, it is his policy to pay for the CFRN exam. Zimmet concluded, “Professional development is important to our nurses so it’s just as important to Paradigm.”
