April 1, 2025
From the Front Lines to the Exam Room, Amy Ester is Redefining Patient Care
By Gina Horan
From the Front Lines to the Exam Room, Amy Ester is Redefining Patient Care
Amy Ester, FNP-C
Owner of Anchored in Health
Amy is more than a family nurse practitioner. She’s a wife, a proud mom of three, and the driving force behind Anchored in Health in Oxford.
She is also a proud Army veteran.
“I walked into the recruiting station when I was 18,” she says. “At that time, women weren’t being accepted into combat roles, so I went the X-ray route instead.”
After training in Germany, she was deployed to Iraq in 2004.
“Some went to Tikrit, some to Fallujah, and I ended up in Mosul,” she recalls.
While she admired the doctors in the field, it was the relentless and compassionate nurses who left the biggest impression.
“My mom and grandma were nurses, but I didn’t realize it was in my blood until later,” she says. “When I was stationed at Walter Reed working in women’s imaging and caring for soldiers fresh from the field, I realized I wanted to do more.”
Being in D.C. also brought her future husband, Jimmy, into her life.
“He was in the Presidential Salute Battery for Arlington,” she says with a smile. “We’ve built this whole life together.”
Amy planned to be career soldier, but fate had other plans.
“Every time I thought I’d move up, I got pregnant,” she says with a laugh. “My first pregnancy was traumatic, and I was inspired by the nurses who cared for me.”
Then, a personal loss changed Amy forever.
“My son was stillborn in 2013, and that kind of loss could have broken me, but it didn’t,” she says. “It made me want to help people even more.”
Eleven months later, she had her youngest child.
“Now, I have three kids here and one in heaven,” she says.
That loss also shaped her approach to medicine.
“The difference between sympathy and empathy is huge,” she says. “I’ve been through a lot, and I know what it feels like so I think those experiences make me a better caregiver.”
She also refuses to conform to the fast-paced, impersonal nature of modern medicine with its quotas and numbers racket.
“Healthcare has moved too far from the patient,” she says. “I plan to bring it back to the personal relationship it deserves.”
Gina moved to Central Florida from the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021. She holds a degree in linguistics and has worked as a fashion editor, photo stylist, lifestyle columnist and food writer since 1995. She later covered travel, events, restaurants, music festivals and sports throughout Northern California, including work as a morning show host with KSAN radio and food critic for KRON Bay TV. A veteran bartender, she has worked in hospitality on and off since high school. Gina joined Akers Media in 2022 and is currently the Food and Lifestyle Editor. Her passions include travel, road trips, history books and podcasts, tasting menus and arriving in a new city without a map.
