Application Deadline Extended for Nurse Practitioner Residency Program

The residency is a 12-month program providing intensive training to both the clinical complexity of family practice in the safety net setting, and training to a high performance, PCMH model for primary care.

The program is specifically intended for family nurse practitioners who are committed to developing careers as PCPs in the challenging setting of community health centers and other safety net settings.The residency is a full-time, 12-month salaried position. The program structure includes precepted primary care sessions, specialty rotations, mentored independent clinics and didactic sessions.

About the Program

We’re training the residents to Thundermist’s model of high-performance health care: advanced access scheduling, planned care, the chronic care model, integrated behavioral health/primary care, team-based, with expert use of health information technology and the electronic health record.

Residency slots are available for the (2016-2017) NP Residency Class. The residency class begins September 1, 2016-August 31, 2017.

The residency year begins with intensive orientation to Thundermist Health Center, the neighborhoods in which the training sites are located, and the health problems of the target population, and includes walking tours of neighborhoods, tours of Thundermist sites statewide, meetings with community leaders, technical training on electronic health record, and orientation by our chief medical officer to the responsibilities and privileges of medical staff participation at CBHA.

The residency has four key components:

Precepted “Continuity Clinics”: (4 sessions/week) These are the cornerstone of the residency. In precepted clinics, the NP residents develop their own patient panel while having an expert Thundermist provider (MD, APRN or PA) exclusively assigned to them.

Specialty Rotations: (2 sessions/week x 1/month) Ten rotations in areas of high-volume/high-burden/high-risk situations most commonly encountered in the setting of the FQHC. Rotations include: Orthopedics, Dermatology, Women’s Health, Pediatrics, Geriatrics, Newborn/nursery, HIV care, Adult Behavioral Health, Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health and Healthcare for the Homeless.

Independent Clinics: (2 sessions/week) During independent clinics, the NP residents work as a member of a team, and see patients at the delegation of the primary care providers, who remain available for consultations. The focus is on the practice of episodic and acute care visits.

Didactic Education Sessions: (1 session/week) Formal learning sessions on a variety of complex clinical challenges most commonly encountered in FQHCs. The content of the presentations is planned to correspond to the residents’ current clinical experiences.

  • Quality Improvement Training: training on Thundermist Health Center’s quality improvement model, including clinical microsystems and facilitation as well as leadership development.
  • Evaluations: the Thundermist Nurse Practitioner residency training program provides and ongoing multi-input evaluation component using qualitative and quantitative measures.

Program Goals

The Nurse Practitioner Residency in Family Practice and Community Health has the following goals:

  •  Increase access to quality primary care for underserved and special populations by training family practice nurse practitioners in a FQHC-based residency program that prepares residents for full and autonomous expert care of complex underserved populations across all life cycles and in multiple settings.
  • Provide new Nurse Practitioners (NPs) with a depth, breadth, volume and intensity of clinical training necessary to serve as primary care providers in the complex setting of the country’s FQHCs.
  • Train new NPs to a model of primary care consistent with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) principles of health care and the needs of vulnerable populations.
  • Improve the clinical skills, confidence, productivity, and job satisfaction of new nurse practitioners who choose to work in underserved community settings, as well as contribute to employer satisfaction and workforce retention.
  • Increase the number of Nurse Practitioners ready to serve in leadership roles in community health settings.

The deadline to apply is MAY 30, 2016.

To apply, please email the application to NPresidency@thundermisthealth.org