Dominique Fontaine, BSN, RN, HNB-BC, HWNC, Founder and CEO of Sage Integrative Wellness, LLC and The Sage Nurse.
Dominique began blossoming into her holistic roots when asked to assist her integrative nurse specialist colleague on a pilot study at Atrium Health, formerly Carolinas Healthcare System in Charlotte, North Carolina addressing the Hispanic/Latino population to improve patient experience with language, cultural, and medical barriers. Dominique’s goal was to introduce self care and healing presence with the Integrative Language Services Team to focus on positive self and patient experiences and outcomes.
Outcomes included increased comfort and peacefulness with the Hispanic/Latino interpreters to improve self care and indirectly with their patients resulting in improved patient experiences with hospital stay, language, cultures, and health literacy. Dominique then co-created a Self Care and Healing Presence teaching module for Atrium Health for new nursing employees for nursing orientation to introduce holistic nursing into the acute care setting.
She got her start working at Atrium Health working in neuroscience, post-surgical/integrative health and wellness, and progressive step-down cardiac units utilizing her holistic nursing core values into her daily nursing practice providing care and compassion to her patients and staff in the environment of western conventional medicine for 3 years.
She has helped with Atrium Health’s Integrative Medicine and Wellness department to co-create an abstract proposal for a non-research poster presentation called Rebuilding a Healing Environment Within Healthcare System by Introducing Integrative Health Practitioner Certification Program presented at the American Holistic Nurses Association Conference in 2015. She also has helped to formulate and revise The Integrative Health Practitioner Certification Level 1 program that is offered at Cabarrus College of Health Sciences in Charlotte, North Carolina and Atrium Health. Dominique has also assisted with research data collection for an integrative pilot study for the surgical center and the surgical unit in Atrium Health Integrative Health and Wellness department.
She took to travel nursing in southern California expanding her knowledge and expertise in Neurosurgical ICU, trauma ICU, and various other ICUs at Keck Medical Center of USC and multiple other hospitals for another 3 years.
In addition to her extensive background and professional knowledge in holistic nursing and integrative medicine, Dominique has learned brain coping strategies, holistic brain and gut nutrition, brain movement exercises, CBD hemp oil research and benefits, and mind/body/spirit techniques from her personal traumatic brain injury journey.
In Dominique’s private integrative nurse coach practice, she has helped her clients decrease their inflammatory response in acute and/or chronic conditions by decreasing their stress response, creating a more balance and satisfaction between their lives and work, improving clarity over life and career decisions, improving their sleep and energy levels, and gaining empowerment.
Furthermore she helps her clients live healthier and more meaningful lifestyles through holistic nutrition and movement, creating healing environments, establish more happiness, maintain a balanced metabolism, and live a lifestyle of sustainable primary prevention by supporting the body with gentle healing.