I am the team leader for our exceptional pain nurse practitioners. I oversee the multidisciplinary care of our pain patients and perform procedures such as trigger point injections, intrathecal pain pump medication refills and programming, occipital nerve blocks, sphenopalatine ganglion nerve blocks, and trochanteric injections.
We have a wide variety of procedural and research opportunities in our practice. Advance practice providers (APPs) are routinely encouraged to pursue our own research and procedures. The greatest challenge we face today is combatting our current opioid epidemic. The APPs in the interventional pain center are on the front lines offering alternatives to opioids and educating patients that detoxification is necessary for optimal health and quality of life.
I was recently certified to perform auricular acupuncture last year and have started a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of auricular acupuncture in assisting patients that are weaning from opioids. I am now taking this a step forward into our neonatal population and designing a study I hope to have in place next year to assist our infants at risk for developing neonatal abstinence syndrome. This project has me very hopeful I can provide another treatment option for these babies.
I am currently attending the Medical University of South Carolina in pursuit of my PhD in Nursing Science. Personally, I am a mother of two small boys, Trip and Rhett, and love to spend my time with them and my husband, Eddie. We are an active family that enjoy spending time outside and taking our new puppy, Granger, on adventures. Those close to me know I am a huge SEC football fan.