SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Upstate Medical University in November will start a new nurse-practitioner (NP) residency program that it says will offer a new “post-graduate experience while bringing much-needed medical care to underserved communities.” To pay for the program, Upstate Medical is using a grant from the Rockville, Maryland–based Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an […]
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Upstate Medical University in November will start a new nurse-practitioner (NP) residency program that it says will offer a new “post-graduate experience while bringing much-needed medical care to underserved communities.”
To pay for the program, Upstate Medical is using a grant from the Rockville, Maryland–based Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The $2.8 million will fund four, one-year resident positions for each of the next four years in underserved rural, urban, and tribal areas for a total of 16 residency positions.
Any clinically trained NP or DNP (doctor of nursing practice) who is nationally board certified and graduated in the last 18 months is eligible to apply for the first cohort.
Jennifer Vaughn, executive assistant dean of administration for the Upstate College of Nursing, said the goal of the grant is to increase access to health care in underserved areas and provide “much-needed” training for the nurse practitioners.
“It is significant in terms of the need in these areas,” Vaughn added in an Upstate Medical news release.
For more information on how to apply, contact Vaughn at johnjenn@upstate.edu.
Residents will work at East Hill Medical Center in Auburn (rural); the Onondaga Nation Health Center in Nedrow (tribal); and at Liberty Resources Primary Care on James Street; and Upstate Family and Preventive Medicine at the Nappi Wellness Institute (urban).
The program is a collaboration between Upstate’s College of Nursing and the department of family medicine, which has family-medicine residents at these locations as well.
Together, the NP and family-medicine residents will receive training one-half day each week. The NPs will receive extra training and rotations in behavioral and mental health and women’s health, two services that are “especially lacking” in these areas, Upstate Medical University said.
Dr. Clyde Satterly, chair of the department of family medicine, said adding an NP resident program has long been a goal of his for several reasons, including the opportunities it provides for more interprofessional education.
“I feel this is important to academic medical centers more than ever because it prepares health professions learners who may be coming from different backgrounds and specialties to learn to work in a collaborative team environment,” he said. “This is exactly what we should be doing to provide effective patient-centered population health.”
In addition to serving the community, the new program benefits both NPs and DNPs, allowing for continuing education and a “smoother entry into full-time practice,” Upstate said.
Vaughn said nurse practitioners traditionally graduate and are launched straight into practice with varying caseloads and levels of mentorship and orientation.
“This establishes a solid process that allows the NP a year to ramp up their caseload and introduces them to the interdisciplinary setting because they will receive their training right alongside the family practice medical residents,” Vaughn said. “This will give those NPs that same transition into practice and a really solid foundation for going forward.”
Satterly said as care becomes “increasingly complex,” the need for formal additional training for nurse practitioners becomes “that much more important.”
“Providing primary care in today’s environment can be pretty complex not only because our knowledge base must be comprehensive, but because we now understand how patients’ social determinants of health can affect outcomes,” he said. “This is becoming more of a challenge to family-medicine residents who complete a three-year residency but is especially difficult for nurse practitioners who receive no residency training. The additional collaborative training from our residency will help to better prepare NPs for more effective practice.”
Vaughn said such residency programs are in their infancy and that the goal for Upstate’s program is to go through the accreditation process in year three and to have more sustainable funding in the future.
Both Vaughn and Satterly also noted that they hope the new program leads to more retention of the residents in the local community.