Nurse Faculty Practice Network
History
The Vanderbilt University School of Nursing has demonstrated its strong interest in faculty practice through its long history of large scale implementation. Prior to 1991, the SON used shared salary contacts to place nurse practitioners and other advanced practice nurses in collaborative practices with physicians and within agencies. The type of practice ranged from mental health services to primary care to management positions within healthcare institutions. These practice roles were integrated with the traditional academic responsibilities expected of nursing school faculty. Workload was distributed between teaching, practice, and research. There were, in addition, contracts between the SON and 2 tertiary medical centers for nurse researcher positions.
Beginning in 1991, the SON secured Kellogg Funding to start a nurse managed primary care and mental health center in an urban underserved community within Nashville. That clinic became and remains the largest practice operation for the SON. In 1999, nurse midwifery services were added. In the early months of TennCare, the state's Medicaid managed care program started in 1994, the original clinic was able to use capitation dollars to manage a population of about 5000 patients.
In 1996, the SON established its first school-based practice at a K-6 school located near the Vine Hill Clinic. This clinic functions as a satellite of the clinic and care is coordinated between the clinic PCPs and the school-based PNP and FNP faculty. A second clinic (K-4) was added in 1997. Both sites serve children with chronic health, mental health, and developmental conditions, including asthma, ADHD, depression, diabetes, sickle cell disease, seizure disorders, hemophilia, congenital heart diseases, CP, and immune system disorders. Grant funding underwrites some, but not all, costs associated with the school-based health program.
Various other faculty practices function on a more limited scale--in partnership with community OB-GYN physicians, at Planned Parenthood clinics, with psychiatrists at Vanderbilt, at the worksite, in a rehab hospital, at a psychiatric hospital, conducting pre-op anesthesia workups, providing geriatric primary care in long term care facilities, and delivering primary care services within an internal medicine practice.