Vanderbilt Medical Center has been a beckon of growth and development for my career in healthcare over the last 10 years. I came to VUMC in 2012 as a registered nurse in the Adult ER., became a board-certified family nurse practitioner in 2016 and started with Vanderbilt Health Oncall (VHOC) in 2018. My current role for Vanderbilt Health OnCall is Advanced Practice Team Leader. As an NP, I provide care for patients in the privacy of their homes or via telehealth. Patient conditions range from acute episodic (UTI, strep throat, flu, etc.) to more complex such as patients who have recently been discharged from the hospital. Our team partners with other clinical teams at VUMC including the Adult ED, Primary Care, Home Care Services, and Surgical Weight Loss.
As an advanced practice team lead, I support my NP colleagues through challenging patient scenarios and collaborate with VUMC leaders to identify new ways Vanderbilt Health OnCall can partner with other clinical teams at VUMC to improve patient outcomes. Being able to advance my career in a leadership position as well as being able to continue to provide care to patients is one of the best features about being an APP with VUMC.
With any health care career there can be challenges. As a team lead with VHOC, I face many unique challenges from the increasing demand for telehealth availability, as more people move to Tennessee and discover the convenience of receiving care from the comfort of your home, to learning to caring for patients seeking mental health care. My team enjoys finding ways to care for our patients and tackle the many unique challenges that arise.
The best part about being a Family Nurse Practitioner for Vanderbilt Health OnCall is being able to treat the whole patient. In my current role, I can assist patients with not only their medical concerns but also their social and emotional needs when it comes to total care. At Vanderbilt Health OnCall, our main goal is to always educate the patients about their current conditions, medications, and new evidence-based practice standards. We find that our patients are very appreciative of the education provided by our team.
During the pandemic, Vanderbilt Health Oncall NPs cared for patients enrolled in the COVID-to-Home program. By far, this is the work I am most proud of. As a team, we were able to care for patients in the comfort of their homes who had COVID, from the very beginning when not much was known about COVID. Vanderbilt Health OnCall in partnership with Vanderbilt Home Care Services, provided care for patients who were medically complex after recent COVID-related hospitalizations. Through this program, length of stay and readmissions were reduced. Also, during the pandemic, our team implemented a new telehealth program that quickly became a crowd favorite for our patients.
In my free time, I enjoy cheering my two sons on at their many athletic tournaments and games. This is something that brings me great joy. Everyone in my family is a sports fanatic.