A nurse’s search for deeper healing

Leaving behind hospital charts and prescription pads, functional medicine and nutritional therapy practitioner, Kaley Johnson, shares her journey from Canada to Spain. 

Kaley speaks to me from just south of Barcelona. Her journey from conventional nurse to functional registered nutritional therapist is, in her words, “obvious.”  

“I’d always been very holistic,” she says. “If you’d ask my nursing colleagues, they were like, ‘Well, obviously this is what you do,’ because I was the one that was writing papers about how naturopathic doctors should be able to make chest X-ray requisitions.” It’s a wonderfully specific example, no general hand-waving about alternative medicine here.  

Kaley’s story starts in Canada, back when University Mount Royal College was just launching its first nursing programme. “I started my kind of nursing career in post-secondary education in Canada, their first ever programme was the nursing programme,” she says. 

She followed it up with advanced critical care and a master’s degree. The plan, once, had been to become a nurse practitioner. But, like so many plans, that one got side-swiped by real life — children, moving abroad, a different pace. 

“The idea, the plan was to be a nurse practitioner,” she tells me. “But my husband and I were living abroad, and we’re having our children. And so, I went into more of an education focus, the idea was to become a nurse educator.” 

Yet, the nurse educator route didn’t quite soothe the disquiet. Kaley was growing increasingly restless in a system that rewarded compliance more than curiosity. “Really in the end, when you work in the hospital, you’re just doling out medicine and doing what the doctors say,” the qualified yoga instructor adds. “I found it very difficult to really be purposeful in my career that way.” That frustration, that yearning, pushed her towards change. 

I felt like a health investigator. I was doing functional medicine before I even knew what it was

Moving back to Spain, she had a conversation with her husband that planted the seed for Vitality Health Solutions, her wellness practice. “I said to my husband, I want to just help people in a wellness space.” 

She started out as a general health coach. Her clients, however, had other ideas. “They started bringing me things like comprehensive stool analysis and all of these other functional testing,” she says. “I felt like a health investigator at that point.” She laughs. “So, I was doing functional medicine before I even knew what it was.” 

Finding her fit

When she looked to formalise her work, she considered the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM), the gold standard of functional training. But the route to certification required registration, which she didn’t yet have. “I really felt like I was missing that nutrition piece,” she says. “I wanted to fill it out but also find something that was functional.” Enter the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION). 

“When I spoke to the intake [at ION] I was just like, this is exactly what I want,” she says. “This is functional integrative nutrition.” 

Kaley took the part-time Graduate Diploma in Integrative Functional Nutrition, and the experience was unlike any of her previous courses. “It was so refreshing to have tutors that you could talk to, message and ask questions, there was a lot of opportunity for success.” She still talks to her cohort via their Whatsapp group. “Support is key,” she says. 

Critical thinking

Kaley also discovered something more nourishing than just theory – real depth. “It’s like I’m just way ahead of what they teach at IFM,” she says, half-apologetically. “But really when it comes to actually caring for a client and meeting them where they’re at, I feel way ahead.” 

ION’s training emphasised research and critical thinking, being encouraged to form opinions, not follow protocols. “You actually have the opportunity to make up your own mind about certain things, rather than them telling you what it should be,” she explains. 

Now, every client Kaley sees benefits from tools she picked up at ION, especially the matrix and timeline. “This is something I do with every single client still,” she says. The results speak for themselves: “I’ve had clients come to me with MSQ (Medical Symptom Questionnaire) scores of 170, and even within a few months, some have come down into the 40s.” She doesn’t claim magic, just method – and commitment. “Really positive changes,” she says, her voice filled with quiet pride. 

Her approach is deliberately expansive; diet is just a slice of the pie. “I call myself a functional registered nutritional therapist,” she says. 

Her advice to those curious about nutrition? Ask yourself what you want to offer your clients. “If they want a well-rounded functional approach to care, then this is an amazing programme,” she says. “Enjoy learning about all of these intricate and, what I think is, very relevant research.” 

Kaley’s path isn’t tidy or linear, and that’s what makes it compelling. From critical care wards to functional stool analysis, she’s stitched together a career for life.