Advanced practice fellowship training: Creating a bridge from education to practice

30^th World Congress on Advanced Nursing Practice

September 04-06, 2017 | Edinburgh, Scotland

Heidi Ricker, Daniel S Watkins, Susan Mc Nally and Christopher Vates

Penn State Hershey Medical Center, USA

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Adv Practice Nurs

Abstract :

The newly graduating advanced practice provider is faced with many choices. Yet the real question they all face is am I ready to be competent? The transition from being an outstanding bedside nurse to a novice nurse practitioner is one fraught with feelings of stress, anxiety, and inadequacy. Making medically complex decisions to be implemented immediately causes new nurse practitioners to question their professional knowledge base and preparation. In emergency medicine, this stress is amplified by the very intense nature of the field. In a setting where it is necessary to be a jack of all trades, master of a few, one questions if they have the experience necessary to enter into the demanding arena of an Emergency Medicine Provider. Accordingly, Penn State Health System created an advanced practice fellowship in Emergency Medicine to foster new providers� confidence. We have created a program to marry both skills training and critical thinking development to form premier EM providers. In collaboration with the community hospital within the system, the fellows are trained in both academic and community emergency rooms. Additionally, the fellows train in anesthesia, obstetrics, orthopedics, ophthalmology, trauma, critical care, and pre-hospital settings. We have trained the fellows through the high-fidelity simulation center in critical medicine skills as well as case-based study. Case-based modules provide an opportunity for providers to step through assessment and decisions in a safe environment that fosters the rapid and accurate critical thinking needed to excel in emergency medicine. Built for both nurse practitioners and physician assistants, the program was built to foster the respect and experience of caring for today�s patients on an interdisciplinary team. The program has been designed to provide the needed experience, academic rigor, and oversight to make any practitioner ready to assume the role of experienced provider in 12 months. The result of this academic program has been to prove that the fellowship graduates are better prepared, more independent, and capable of assuming a more competent role at graduation. This has made the APC Fellow more functional and financially beneficial to the organization as a whole.

Biography :

Heidi Ricker is a Nurse Practitioner in Emergency Medicine at Penn State Health. She is the Director of the Advanced Practice Fellowship in Emergency Medicine. She has taken her experience as a bedside nurse in a Level 1 Trauma Center in Philadelphia along with the education she received at the University of Pennsylvania to create a program for new-to-practice nurse practitioners and physician assistants to transition smoothly to competent clinicians.