With the national and local demand for Acute Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, Texas Children’s and Texas Tech University have entered into a partnership agreement that supports faculty roles for APRNs, Priscila Reid MS, RN, FNP, CPNP-AC and Julie Kuzin, MSN RN CPNP-PC/AC. Students will enter the program this fall and will benefit from the expertise of these two APRNs that are dedicated to patients and families at Texas Children’s through advancing nursing education and training.
AC-PNPs practice in a variety of settings not only in the hospital’s intensive care and subspecialty units, they extend their practice to the community in caring for the technology dependent child and the chronically ill child with special needs. Historically, the hospital has relied on an abundance of residents to staff the 24/7 units. The shortage of residents and the mandate to reduce resident work hours from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has led many hospitals to rely on acute care nurse practitioner to provide quality patient care. With the shift in the model of using more acute care PNPs, the need for education and training has increased.
The partnership between Texas Tech University Health Science Center and Texas Children’s Hospital allows for Reid and Kuzin to have a paid faculty position with the university while still spending half of their time in the patient care setting at the hospital. We believe that this partnership will strengthen the recruitment of AC-PNPs at Texas Children’s.
“We are positioning Texas Children’s to step into the 21st Century to make a difference in patient outcomes by ‘advancing nursing practice through advanced practice nursing,” said Elizabeth “Charley” Elliott, director of advanced practice providers.
The courses will officially begin in the fall.