I started my nursing career here at Vanderbilt working as a new bedside RN in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit from 1998 to 2000. Work opportunities for my husband allowed us to live in Madison, WI and Memphis, TN from 2000 to 2012, but I was thrilled to have the chance to come back to Nashville as a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP) in 2012.
Over the past 11 years, my job has expanded to several roles in the NICU. I have a clinical role in caring for both preterm and term infants within the NICU but am also a member of the Neonatal Transport Team. As an NNP on the transport team, I transport infants back to Vanderbilt from hospitals in Middle Tennessee and surrounding states. My longest transport thus far has been a flight to Delaware!
One of my other roles in the NICU is Quality Improvement (QI) Project Manager, and I assist multiple QI teams with data analysis and utilizing quality improvement methodology to improve care in the NICU. While I love the day-to-day management and care of infants in the NICU, I also find QI work extremely rewarding. With improved outcomes from QI work, I have a positive effect beyond just the few babies that I am caring for in the NICU on a particular day, but to all the babies in the unit. In 2012, the NICU QI leadership team had an article describing our QI program published in the Joint Commission Journal of Quality and Patient Safety.
My last role in the NICU involves research. I am the research coordinator for the NICU Medical Director, Dr. Dupree Hatch, and our research involves improving the care of infants who require mechanical ventilation. The goals of our research are to identify ways to facilitate weaning and extubation of critically ill infants in the NICU. I also have my own research interest involving the workload of advanced practice providers in the NICU, and I developed a model to quantify workload in the NICU. Our workload research team integrated the workload model into eStar and validated the model with both advanced practice providers and physicians in the NICU. I will be sharing the results of our workload study at the upcoming Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in April 2023.
When not at work, I spend most of my time with family. I am the mom of two sons, one is a freshman at Vanderbilt University and the other is a junior in high school. Music is an excessively big part of my family’s activities. My entire fall is spent being a marching band mom – cheering on the Band of Gold at Hendersonville High School. My husband and I love the Nashville Symphony and are season ticket holders. On Sundays, you can find me playing hand bells with my church’s hand bell choir.