ZEINAB ARAFAT, APRN, AG-ACNPC
More than a decade in Cleveland Clinic intensive care units, on three continents. More than 35,000 patients since.
Zeinab Arafat is a board-certified acute care nurse practitioner and the clinical leader of a high-volume practice in Palm Beach Gardens and Stuart, serving Palm Beach and Martin counties. She built it, she runs the floor herself, and half of every patient it has ever seen, she saw personally.
THE NUMBERS, AND WHERE THEY COME FROM
- Half
- of every patient the practice has ever seen, she saw personally
- 35,000+
- patients cared for across the practice she built
- 4.9
- average rating across more than 2,500 Google reviews, 97% of them five star
- 25+
- providers who have practiced under her clinical leadership since 2021
Every one of them, she reviewed.
Individual patients on the practice's records since it opened in 2021.
Public Google reviews. More than 200 of the written reviews name her directly.
She leads a team of 20 today, across providers, medical assistants and administration.
INTENSIVE CARE
She started in a medical and surgical ICU and stayed there.
She trained in Egypt and worked the medical and surgical intensive care units at Cleveland Clinic’s Dar El Fouad Hospital in Cairo, rising to charge nurse and then nursing supervisor. Cleveland Clinic affiliated hospitals across the Gulf brought her in to assist on projects and to lead infection control and education.
She came to the United States and took the floor again, in a bigger system: ICU and surgical ICU at Cleveland Clinic Tradition in Florida. She finished a master’s degree there and qualified in acute care — the advanced-practice track written for the sickest adults in the building. Licensed in Florida since 2016, board-certified since 2021.
CRISIS DEPLOYMENT, 2020–2021
She spent the first year of the pandemic where it was worst.
Seven fixed-term crisis contracts in eleven months, across six states, taken while the units were at their fullest. She went to Brooklyn at the height of it, where she coordinated patient treatment and transport with the US Navy hospital ship. She was in Sonoma County during the wildfires.
Apr–Jun 2020
Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn · ICU, COVID crisis team
10 weeks
Jun–Aug 2020
Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami · ICU, crisis team lead
8 weeks
Sep 2020
Sonoma Specialty Hospital, California · MICU, crisis team lead
4 weeks
Oct–Nov 2020
Orlando Regional Medical Center · Rapid response, COVID unit
4 weeks
Nov–Dec 2020
Billings Clinic, Montana · Rapid response, ICU and MICU
5 weeks
Dec 2020–Jan 2021
Mercy Hospital, Cedar Rapids · Rapid response
4 weeks
Jan–Mar 2021
Community First Medical Center, Chicago · Rapid response
9 weeks
THE PRACTICE
She runs it from the floor.
She began as the sole provider, working seven days a week. She carried 91% of the practice’s appointments in 2022 and 87% in 2023, and hired against the standard she had worked to in Cleveland Clinic hospitals. She opened in Palm Beach Gardens, and in 2025 the practice expanded into Stuart, in Martin County.
She works to a narrow span of control and directs the floor herself rather than through layers, taking calls from providers, medical assistants and the administrative team through the day.
WHAT PATIENTS SAY
Of the reviews that name her, nearly all are five star.
The practice holds a 4.9 rating across more than 2,500 Google reviews, and more than 200 of the written ones name her directly — all but a handful of those five star. Counted by theme, the three that recur most in those reviews are being listened to, thoroughness, and persistence in following up.
Patients describe conditions that had gone unexplained for a long time before someone investigated them. That is the pattern in the reviews.
She is direct about what she will and will not do. If a viral infection does not need an antibiotic she says so, and she does not write one because the patient is unhappy. She will not sign paperwork she does not agree with.
ON RESPECT
Excellent healthcare requires respect in both directions.
Patients deserve dignity, honesty, competence, and a clinician who will tell them the truth about what they need. Healthcare workers deserve dignity, safety, reasonable boundaries, and the ability to exercise professional judgment.
These are not in tension. A system that protects only one side eventually fails both.