Pediatric Primary Care NP, Pediatric Acute Care NP, and Neonatal NP Webinar

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Columbus, OH, Washington wonderful, OK thank you everyone. My name is Jamie Bergstein. I'm the associate director of graduate admissions. An marketing here at the University Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to day to learn about some of our different programs. Just a few bits of housekeeping and then I will send it over to our wonderful faculty.

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So the programs we're going to talk about today are our pediatric primary care nurse practitioner program.

You're going to have to because I'm hearing virtually nothing.

And the pediatric acute care nurse practitioner program and the neonatal nurse practitioner program.

So with that said, I will kick it off too.

Leave Jessica are you?

Up first.

Now I'm right here.

OK, great.

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Hi everybody, good morning or Good afternoon depending on where you're joining us. Joining us. I apologize for the boys wear.

Little urgency care.

Some of the functions here, but thank you all for joining us. It sounds like all of you may be interested in either the pediatric primary care, the pediatric acute care or the new Natal Nurse Practitioner program. So wanted to talk a little bit about those today and talk a little bit about what makes pen different from other programs you may be considering. So one of the things that I always like to talk about is that when you come to the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, you're really part of the University and there were so many resources.

And such a wonderful rich campus and so many things to take advantage of. And we certainly remind you with, well, we'll be focusing on specific graduate programs at the School of Nursing today that we really are part of a very international campus with a lot of wonderful opportunities. So if you haven't already done so, if you really just looked at the School of Nursing site, take a look at the whole University site. 'cause there's so much to offer an again. So many wonderful opportunities.

So when we start talking about folks who want to go back to Graduate School and thinking about, you know, being a nurse practitioner and what it means to be an acute care nurse practitioner or a primary care nurse practitioner, we always like to start off just talking very briefly about what we call the lace model or the consensus model. So the number of years ago, a number of national organizations got together and they sort of tried to streamline a process, whereas the license.

I'm sure that you hold as a nurse practitioner the way that the program that you're going to is accredited your board certification as a nurse practitioner in your education all align. So taking you back maybe 20 years ago, we had a case where there were only primary care programs. There were no acute care programs, so people would complete a primary care nurse practitioner program and go practice in a critical care setting. And really, their license sure was in primary care. There are programs accreditation was in primary care of their board, certification was in primary care.

Again, their education was in primary care, but they were practicing in an area that was very different. Maybe again a critical care area. So really the group again about 40 different organizations came together a number of years ago and said We really need to have a model that kind of regulates this, and that was the basis of the the.

Consensus model or the lace model? So essentially, it defined that there's four APR enrolls and you're here today learning about the nurse practitioner role. But as you can see at the bottom of the slide there, there's also the clinical nurse Specialist Nurse Midwife in the nurse anesthetist, and those are the for a PRN rolls. And then everybody has a population focus so I know a lot of people want to go back to school and have flexibility and really, but what you're doing when you become a nurse practitioner is your specializing in a certain population, so those of you here today or interested in specializing, it sounds like a neonatal.

Or pediatric care, and that's part of your population focus and then as part of these programs are going to further specialize into either acute care or primary care Pediatrics or at neonatal care. And those are really three different population with three different accreditations for those programs with three different types of licensure with three different board exams and with three different types of Education. So when you think about the domainers practitioner, if you really want to think about what population you want to take care of, and I know a lot of times people say, well, I want to work out patient, so I must want primary care.

And one of the things we are going to focus on is the fact that the care is not based on the setting, it's actually based on. The population patient needs. So, for example, you may have critical care nurse practitioners working in high tech outpatient rehab type facilities where kids or trade vent dependent lots of medical technologies. You may have neonatal nurse practitioners working not only in the Nick, You perhaps also in a new, and it'll follow up clinic in an outpatient setting. You may have a primary care nurse practitioner who's in a consulting service.

For a hospital, really focusing on more primary care based issues, so it's not really about where you where you're practicing in terms of the setting, but it's really your area of focus as a nurse practitioner is going to be based on your patient needs, not at all in this setting.

So when we think about graduate programs in graduate programs here at Penn, I just wanted to talk about some of the basic foundations of the pediatric and neonatal nurse practitioner programs, 'cause even though they focus on different populations, there are some similarities amongst all program. So all of the students who come to our programs will have advanced Physiology and pathophysiology, advanced pharmacology, advanced physical assessment in clinical decision making, and then also a research cord. The students in our programs also have education in child and family development.

And then we have theory courses that are really built around their population specialties, so the theory courses that the neonatal students take or different from the theory courses at the primary care students take and then similarly the clinical courses those different population focused programs have are different as well, and one of the things that I wanted to bring anymore.

That pen actually uhm fines legal sites for our students. So unlike some other programs where you have to find your clinical sites, we use clinical sites that we've used for many years. We have long term relationships with the majority of our preceptor as many of them are graduates of our program and really understand the expectations. And I always like to illuminate this because one of the most important things that you can think about when you think about your Graduate School experience is your clinical work. You're going to do 500 to 600 or more hours as part of your graduate program.

And the quality of your clinical experience is really important, so it's not about just getting those hours done and kind of getting it checked of- it's so important that those experiences are quality experiences and we work very hard in order to provide quality experiences for our students. We actually have two site coordinators who helped to organize our clinical sites. Both were on the phone today. Who can help answer questions Heather Carlino and Alicia Bischof, or with us. And they're both practicing nurse practitioners.

To um?

Who really just focus on finding clinical sites for the students and really fostering those relationships? And as soon as we're kind of done going through here, we can and everybody's audio is up and working will introduce all of ourselves and tell you a little bit more about our clinical practices in those sort of things you can understand our roles in our practices as well.

So when we think about our again, our pediatric and neonatal nurse practitioner programs, we've in all of our programs, we prepare students to practice autonomously. We prepare them to collaborate with members of the health care team. We prepare them to do advocacy so we do have a focus on health policy and advocacy, and then something different about our students as they really actively participate in scholarly activities. So we do a lot of work and practice and assignments associated with oral presentations, 'cause it's advanced.

Practice nurse is going to be practicing to the full scope of practice as as a nurse practitioner, oral presentations or something to do across your karere. We also focus on publications we do in our programs require a manuscript for publication in the pizza cute and then you needle programs. All of our students admitted manuscript for publication and many of them are published just shortly after graduation. We all of our students and across all programs or trained to do poster presentations. Many years we try to take those posters to a national conference. Obviously this year has been a little different, but.

That's something that we do. Our students actively engage in quality improvement activities and have the opportunities to engage in research as well. So lots of different opportunities that our students have for scholarly activities beyond just learning to be expert clinicians.

So one of the things that is special about pen as well is we really pride ourselves on having close relationships with students and with having close faculty mentor ship. So all of our faculty or accessible and available in a normal here were on campus and available in our offices to meet with students. But we also assign each student during their clinical sequence of faculty preceptor which may be better termed faculty mentor and that person really helps guide the student. Give them lots of feedback on their work on their clinical performance on there.

HM, Peas and things like that that they write and is there really is a sounding board to help them sort of develop across their nurse practitioner program into being quality nurse practitioner. We really pride ourselves in the fact that we are educating our colleagues or future colleagues and I work shoulder to shoulder with many of our graduates so we really do pride ourselves in close faculty mentor ship so that we can again create nurse practitioners who we know provide wonderful quality care. We also have a very robust simulation program.

Again, across all of our programs that we're talking about today, all the different skills that are appropriate for the varying.

Practice sites where students will go so certainly with the neonatal students do in some of the slides you'll see there it might be different when then what primary care or pediatric acute care would do from accumulation. Perspective very robust simulation program. Anna wonderful simulation facility at the School of Nursing as well.

In addition, we really pan has a big focus on community engagement and academically based community service can speak specifically. This is actually a slide of two of our students in a high school student that the we did some partnership with a Nether Center, which is the academically based community service center at Penn and we do lots of different programs in the community that engages high school middle school students.

In the community that engages all sorts of different people across the community to try to improve the communities to try to partner with the communities to provide better access to care on a number of different things. And we do partner with high school students. We went to a national conferences, I think two years ago and that student came along with us and presented a research poster that she helped work with on with two of our graduate students. So a very vibrant oppurtunity is for community engagement and academically based community service is part of our programs.

So I'm going to take a quick pause here and I'm just going to do some introductions. Excuse me. So I kind of started and wanted to pause here and introduce ourselves as faculty and then I'll hand it over to Vicki, who can talk more specifically about the pediatric primary care program. But I'm Jessica Strong Farber. I am the program director of the pediatric care and the neonatal nurse practitioner programs. Here, a pen from a clinical training perspective. I actually have two degrees from Penn. My bachelors in my Masters. I graduated.

About 20 ish. Little more years ago from what was at the time, the pediatric critical care nurse practitioner program here at Penn, it's now one of our contributions and I have a doctor of nursing practice from Case Western. I have a medical active clinical practice in the pediatric intensive care unit at the Children's Hospital Philadelphia and I do like to highlight that a majority of our actually, I think all of our faculty in these programs have active clinical practices, which is, I think is so important because we can certainly share with you.

Not only the latest and greatest literature in evidence, but also what's actually happening in clinical practice, so.

I will ask, um, Vicki and then Alicia and Heather to introduce themselves as well. And then, Vicki, if you want to tell us more about the primary care program, that would be great.

That would be great. Why don't? Uhm, we allow Alicia and Heather.

To introduce themselves and Jessica, thank you so much for jumping in. I was having some technical difficulties. We encourage our students regularly to chant. Flexibility is the key to mental health because often things do happen, but I appreciate you stepping in. Thank you. So do you want to introduce Heather or Heather? Introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm Heather Carlino Uhm.

Oh, I'm getting feedback.

I am also graduated from pan right along time ago, longer than Jessica with a degree in CSS DNS and then I went back and did a post Masters to become an NP in pediatric acute care. Acute chronic. Uhm I am currently the admissions coordinator for the Q Chronic in neonatal nurse practitioners programs and also the clinical plate placement person for.

All of those programs? Uhm, and that's it.

Alicia, do you wanna introduce yourself?

Sure, my name is Alicia Bischoff. I am a pediatric nurse practitioner, an I graduated from Penn's undergraduate program as well as the Masters program and I am currently enrolled in the DNP program at Penn. With one more year to go.

My I've been working as a as a primary care nurse practitioner at a private practice in South Jersey for the past 25 years.

And Anna pen. My role is I teach the physical assessment course and I also in charge of all the clinical site placements for the pediatric students as well as I help out with the with the other Masters programs as well.

Thank you so much and I'm Vicky while I'm director of the primary care pediatric nurse practitioner track. Uh, I have graduated from Penn with both my Masters an my undergraduate degree and I currently practice in a nurse managed center a little North of the city. For those of you who might not know what a nurse managed center is.

It's run by nurse practitioners in Pennsylvania. We have a collaborating physician. He's there when we need him and he leaves us alone when we don't so we don't see him very often. It's a very independent practice. An I've been a nurse practitioner along time, so it took me along time to get to that level of independence. But I love the diversity that we have there. I say that the local elementary schools, the parents speak 44 different languages.

So while my Spanish is bad, it's certainly better than, uh, my Bengali and my Arabic in my Korean. But I think that we really provide a very nurse focused care that we give to our families. And I just love the relationships that I have developed with our families. There I've been at that site more than 18 years, so it's really fun for me to see these kids that came in as newborns.

Or came in at school age kids now going off to college.

Um, I'm

a nice change. The side here so I'm very proud of our nurse practitioner program. It's one of the oldest pediatric primary care programs in the country. We've been around since the 70s, and so it means that we have very strong relationships with our alumni.

For a support for jobs and for clinical sites that we think is really valuable, UM, in terms of our program, our focus really is on general, well, child and adolescent care. Focus on minor acute problems, health promotion, and really all couched in the idea of supporting families so that they can best help their kids.

Grow and be nurtured and I just love the long term relationships. As I said oh, it's been alluded to before, but I'll say it again because I think as you begin to evaluate other programs throughout the country, it's really important to ask who gets the clinical site and one of the real pluses of pen is that the school arranges the clinical sites for the.

Students are students complete over 500 hours of clinical and their clinical sites are in the Tristate area so those of you that don't know much about Philadelphia geography, New Jersey and Delaware really right over the bridge. So we have three states of very close to each other.

Our students are eligible for a state certification is certified registered nurse practitioners and also for national certification through the pediatric nursing credentialing board. So where do our graduates practice?

Our while they can be in hospital based clinics or specialty based clinics again um as Jessica talk before if you think about uhm you CC unstable complex critically ill. Those patients need to be cared for by an acute care nurse practitioner, but everybody else can be cared for by a pediatric nurse practitioner of primary. Excuse me, a primary care nurse practitioner.

And so our graduates practice in federally qualified health centers. Hospital primary care clinics, outpatient clinics or doctors offices. We've had students who have done advocacy through the Legislature who have been involved with grants for special programs like weight loss and weight management and programs like that.

Alright, let me turn it back over to Jessica.

Thank you very much for that overview. Uhm, so again, I'm the program director. Both the pediatric acute care and you don't know. Nurse practitioner program. So just want to briefly run through and talk a little bit. As Vicky mentioned the scope of practice for the primary care nurse partitioners the scope of practice and really the population focus for the acute care nurse practitioners are really those patients who have unstable, chronic, complex, acute and critical conditions. So again, it's based on patient care needs, not the setting. We certainly have, uh.

Acute care nurse practitioners who work in places like out patient airway clinic with anti that focuses on the airway and kids with Traxx we have nurse practitioners who function in outpatient, for example neurology or neurosurgery clinics where you're going to see kids with multiple VP shunts or vagal nerve stimulators to control seizures, so not the sort of simple.

Pretty simple chronic illness, but more very complex.

Chronic illness, unstable chronic illness, or critical conditions. Those are really the things that we focus on from the population focus.

So one of the things that unique at pan. There are many pediatric acute care nurse practitioners in the country. We have three different concentrations that we really focus on, and I like to really remind everybody that everybody gets the same foundation on minimum absolute required education for board certification to be a pediatric acute care nurse practitioner. But we allow students to focus their education in one of three concentrations, either acute, chronic, which we acknowledge that so many kids who are frequent users of the health care system have complex chronic illness.

And certainly those those students who focus in the acute chronic concentration often focus on those sort of children who have that, you know, unstable complex chronic illness as part of their population focus. We have a critical care concentration, which is really for those who have a passion for critical care and then pediatric oncology for those students who have a passion for pediatric oncology and what makes each of these concentrations different. Each of our students gets to take an elective so acute chronic students get to choose from many electives.

The critical care an oncology students have an elected that's pre selected for them that's focused to their population. So the critical care students take really a technologies type elective that is actually taught together with the adult acute students. So things like echo, ventilators, bads, dialysis, all those, sort of ECG very in depth. EKG interpretation. Although sort of critical care technologies that you may need. And similarly there's an oncology elected. That's for the oncology students.

Hum that focuses on sort of varying oncology diagnosis, treatments, etc. That's again very detailed for those students, so that's done with an elective. We also have optional miners, and those are listed on the website. You can take a look at that. You can really take in any of our programs. Some of the ones that we often see students take our palliative care an autism spectrum, although there were others available as well and all of our students in the pediatric acute care nurse practitioner program complete a minimum of 600 clinical hours and in terms of what those hours look like. So all of the oncology concentration students complete their.

Their clinical work in oncology units, both impatient in ambulatory settings. The critical care students complete their clinicals in pediatric ICU, zan cardiac ICU's, and the acute chronic students complete those clinical hours in a whole host of different settings, so it may be step down units or progressive care units. Emergency department's impatience in specialty services, hospitalist services, and then again, some of the more critical on complex outpatient subspecialty services as well.

Our curriculum in clinical experience is really focus on a variety of childhood conditions. We do focus on health and illness across the Continuum, knowing even those children who maybe are critically ill. That part of care delivery is is a focus on both their health and their illness spectrums. So we do have a focus on that. Again, we really feel Cokes on children with acute disorders, complex chronic disorders, chronic illness exacerbation, severe acute illnesses, and critical illness. So that's really the scope of what we.

Look at and again. We have varying electives that we've already discussed.

All of our students in the pediatric acute care nurse practitioner program when they are completed will have be eligible to sit for the PNC be that pediatric nursing certification board acute care exam and they have all the requirements to be licensed as a certified registered nurse practitioner in Pennsylvania or the equivalent in any of the 50 states.

Such as the top briefly about our concentrations and just again put some names and faces together. This is Soo Kim Pasiano, who is our associate program director of the Q Chronic concentration. She's a practicing emergency Department nurse practitioner, the Children's Hospital Philadelphia, and again, she is the leader of the group for the acute chronic concentration. Wanted to talk a little bit about where these students practice. You have completed the acute chronic program or concentration of our program. Rather again, they practice and impatience, specialty and step down units.

Ambulatory specialty populations, eds. Some of the students actually choose to practice and more academically based community service plate programs working in the community with kids with complex chronic illness, some of them going to teach, or two, as with Vicki said with the primary care students, some of them go on to work on Legislature in Capitol Hill.

We also have again an associate program director for the oncology concentration. This is Cindy schmooze. She's also a practicing pediatric acute care nurse practitioner. Her clinical practice as a neuro oncology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

And where do her graduates practice? So all sorts of different inpatient units. Bone marrow transplant, neurolog, liquid solid service as well as ambulatory oncology clinics sometimes on the palliative care team, sometimes in cancer survivorship. So lots of different opportunities for the oncology concentration students as well, and then this is Carrie Shields and every year I say Kerry, we need a different picture of you and she said. But this is me post call this is this is reality. So Kerry is a practicing nurse practitioner in the pediatric.

Intensive care unit at the Children's Hospital, Philadelphia. She's one of my colleagues in clinical practice as well. Cheesy associate program director of the critical care concentration and carry actually holds not only a Masters degree in nursing with a focus in critical care but also a Masters in bioethics. So she is are in program bioethics expert who helps teach that part of the curriculum for us.

In terms of the critical care concentration students and where they practice, as I mentioned, similar to their clinicals, they practice and pick use and cardiac ICU's. Sometimes they also practice in places like progressive care units or again sort of those technology dependent populations in various different settings, and we often see our students also go into neurosurgery, trauma, transplant heart, lung transplant, those sort of sort of interrelated subspecialties to critical care.

And then last but not least, we also have a new Natal Nurse Practitioner program. Molly Mae is the associate program director of the Neo Natal Nurse Practitioner program. Molly is also a practicing neonatal nurse practitioner program at Pennsylvania Hospital, which is one of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Hospital is a very wonderful and very busy Nick. You and delivery hospital Molly is also a DMP student as well.

Um, in terms of the neonatal nurse practitioner program, one of the things that we always like to illuminate is just like we talked about the scope and population focus at the pieds primary impedes acute programs and graduates the focus of the Neo Natal Nurse Practitioner program is in the nurse practitioner role is for those who are neo nate's to age 2 so that education is focused on that population, and then the scope of practice is actually limited to that. So if you want to see 4 year olds, even if their former Premies, then NP program is probably not the right program for you. But certainly if you want to work in a queue.

Or again something you need to follow up and see those kids in the earlier years. Certainly a wonderful role similar to the pizza Coop program. Then you Natal Nurse Practitioner program has more than 600 clinical hours. Those clinical sites are also arranged by Penn and very high level Nick use. We generally try to get every student into a delivery hospital, so if you're coming from a hospital that is not a delivery hospital, we make sure that you get some VR experience and sort of had a bad experience as well, which is so important. This program does include very robust simulation.

Again, not this year because of Covid, but in normal years we actually have an interesting plenary simulation that we do with our neonatal students and the anesthesia in Women's Health students. To simulate, you know, sort of a delivery anesthesia type situation. So lots of really wonderful focused experiences for these students in the neonatal nurse practitioner program, not only in their theory and didactic courses, but wonderful clinical experience is an amazing simulation. Experiences an again taught by Faculty of all practicing neonatal nurse practitioners.

When the neonatal nurse practitioner students are completed with their program, they will be eligible sit for the NCC. The National Certification Corporation board exam and again will be eligible for licensure as a Nurse Practitioner. Certified Registered Nurse Practitioner in Pennsylvania or any of the 50 states.

So where do they practice already mentioned Nick? Use some of our students will work in surgical neonatal care areas, high risk follow-up, schools of nursing, again, a number of our students go on to teach as part of their continued scholarship and academic love.

Alright, so as I sort of illuminated and just to think about how pen is different, we already talked about how we choose and help select and identify clinical sites for our students and really try to keep those experiences really focused on being a very robust experience to contribute to their education. We already we also have opportunities for the students to really learn all components of the nurse practitioner role, so not only being expert clinicians but also advocates thinking about how policy and advocacy we teach a lot of leadership skills. Our students have an opportunity to lead Qi projects and things and then also scholarship which we talked about with them.

Mr presentations and with publications etc. So just some examples of this work. So this is Vicki and her team at lobby day in Harrisburg. Sadly not this year, but in past years they take a group of students there and actively participate in health policy by lobbying. And many of you know that we've been lobbying for full practice authority as nurse practitioners in Pennsylvania and Vicki and her team have been really a big part of that effort.

We also talk about scholarships, so again we have a focus on family systems. We have the Qi and poster type assignments and projects that we do to teach and help students engage in scholarship. And again, many of our students have been published as part of their manuscript for publication assignment, and this is an example of one student who was published just a few years ago.

Um, we do programs as well. Part of our program, excuse me, is developing a poster for presentation here. Some examples. I believe these are actually primary care posters which have displayed the wonderful work that those students have done to an outside audience. Really developing those skills for presenting at a conference both regionally and nationally.

Yeah, thank you.

OK.

Alright, I just before we get to questions first I want to also extend my thanks to Jessica, Heather, Alicia, Vicki and Molly who's not on the call. Um, flexibility is definitely the name of the game he ran. I really appreciate you taking your time to do this web and are we as many of you know, we usually have in person open houses, but obviously cannot do that this year. So I just want to extend my thanks. I also want to remind everyone about our application deadlines.

Our application is now open up if you are not currently a nurse, so you'd be applying to the accelerated BSN or BSN MSN program. Your deadline is October 15th 2020 annual here back in mid February.

If you are applying to our MSN program, all of our programs can be completed full time or part time. If you are interested in applying and starting in the spring, which would be January 2021, year deadline is also October 15th annual here by mid December. If you are interested in applying for full-time, your deadline is November 2nd and different programs start on at different times. So if your program starts in the summer.

You'll hear by mid February if your summer. Excuse me if your program starts in the fall. You're here by mid April and if you're interested in applying for part time but not until the summer or fall, you have plenty of time to submit an application that is not due until March 15th, 2021. And you'll hear back between late April in mid may. So while we have one deadline for each enrollment term, you will be notified on a rolling basis for our MSN programs.

So we understand you might have colleagues or friends or also applying and you may all very well here back at different times, so don't worry, you will hear back by these latest notification dates.

And I also just want to highlight additional webinars you might be interested in exploring other programs. We also will have general webinars for our accelerated BSN, BSN, MSN, MSN and nurse anesthesia programs. They'll focus generally on those programs an mostly focus on admissions tips and tricks as well as some financial aid information. As I said in the beginning, all of these webinars.

Will be recorded. The recordings are posted on line an by attending this webinar, you'll receive an email with the recordings in a couple of days.

So now we will take questions if you want to type them into the chat box for our wonderful faculty, you can scroll up and down to see the questions as they come in so.

Clever wants to start can start.

It looks like the first question is in neonatal question. So the question is if we are applying to the accelerated BSN MSN program for new and it'll we must take a two year gap after the BSN portion to get experience in Aniku before and being able to move into the Masters program part of the program. And that's correct. All of our we should mention this. All of our programs really are built on a foundation of having a solid nursing clinical practice. I always say we're not here to teach you to be a nurse. We're here to teach you to be an advanced practice nurse. So coming in with that experience.

Helps make you successful in the nurse practitioner. Part of the program, and I'll ask Vicki to talk about the primary care aspect of this as well, but certainly for the neonatal students. We do ask that you work in an issue in a high level Nick you for the pizza, cute students if you want to do the oncology concentration, its oncology pediatric oncology experience for the critical care concentration, it would be critical care experience at a pick you or see I see you not unlike you actually for that program because the populations are different.

Come for the acute chronic concentration, so experience in acute care of infants and children in some sort of impatient settings, so it could be any sort of impatient acute care. Pediatric completely pediatric experience. It could also be Edie. Those sort of areas and I don't know Vicky. If you wanted to talk just briefly, as we're talking about the experience requirement for primary care, what is important for your program?

So again, as Jessica said, it's it's more difficult to be an advanced practice nurse if you've never been a nurse. We certainly look at the whole picture. We have many people who have done wonderful things. Um, prior to this they have passed degrees. They've.

You know, had very interesting jobs where they had patient care experiences or did research Emma. Look at that whole picture to see. Is there a level of maturity? Is there a level of experience that we feel that you could be successful in our program?

Thank you, but it looks like when is received, many medications to the accelerated BSN MSN program for the NP group. If you want to talk about the accelerated applications at all here.

We do certainly received quite a number.

Yeah, we we do receive a lot of a BSN applications in total receive around 600 or so an. I would say a little more than half are two. A BSN MSN specialty. We have a holistic application process.

So we are, of course we guarantee you a clinicals patapon admission, so we can admit more than we have spots for, but we are really looking at the whole picture, as Vicki said, we're looking at your previous experience, your interest in becoming a nurse in an advanced practice nurse, and the same thing for our MSN programs. For those who are currently nurses or in Nursing School.

So we we receive a variety of applications for each MSN specialty. Again, we're not looking to be more competitive by limiting our spots, we really accept many competitive applicants.

Great thank you Jamie. It looks like the next question is what is the next application deadline after October 15th and when would that program begin?

So the next application deadline would be November 2nd, and that's if you're interested in applying to the MSN program for full time enrollment. I believe all the programs here today start in August, which is our.

Well, late August which is our fall.

Semester so you would hear back. Probably within, uh, the next in 2021. If you were interested in enrolling part time for summer or fall, you wouldn't have to apply until March 15th, 2021.

And.

Yep.

No, I was just gonna say Jamie. It looks like there's another admission type question. It says if we're currently in the 2020-2021 penne BSN cohort, you want to answer that question.

Sure, so for anyone here who is a current BSN or a BSN student who's applying for sub matriculation, your deadlines are a little different. If you are a traditional BSN senior you need to apply by November 1st. If you're an A BSN student or a traditional BSN junior you'll need to apply by April 1st. There is a document on the website if you search for summit regulation.

Or just shoot us an email and I can send you that information.

Thank you, I'm gonna apologize. It is storming at my house. You may hear Thunder and lightning and rain in the background so it's trouble hearing me. I can certainly talk louder or repeat what I'm saying. So the next question is for experienced nurses RNS applying to the new donors practitioner program full time, can you really complete the program in a little over the year so you can so we have 1? Two are really three year plans of study for the NP program in terms of what the full time one year plan of study looks like. It starts in August at the beginning of really.

Late August beginning of September, and you finish generally the first week of August. It is a full packed year. The full time plan of study makes it very difficult to work. Some of our students will work part time or PRN in the fall, but really, once you get to the clinical, the bulk of the clinical sequence beginning in the spring through the end of August, it's really challenging to continue to work any sort of full time or significant part time schedule just to give you a sense, the fall we have about 50 clinical hours plus an additional course.

John newborn assessment, which is an additional about 40 clinical hours plus all of your didactic work in the spring and summer semesters. From January through the through the end of the program in August, there's over about 600 clinical hours, so you're talking about two to three days a week in clinical in the spring, and then a full day an entirely full day of class and most of our students tell us it takes about one full day a week to complete the additional class work in this summer in most years. Again, non covid.

Our students do an emerging clinical in the summer, so it's a number of weeks where you're, you're on your clinical area for maybe five days a week so that you can get sort of a lanja tude inal more dense experience, which gives you a different kind of experience. So you absolutely can complete it one year. We have many students who do just know that it does require some adjustments in your work schedule if you wanted to keep working a bit more. Certainly can again stretch to a two or three year plan of study, but even during that political sequence from January to August.

For both the neonatal and the pizza cute programs, it's almost it's nearly impossible. Even if you're a part time student to work full time, some of our students to work part time, some stay PRN, some don't work at all, and we can talk to you individually about what might be best for you. But that's our program. I don't know, since we're on that topic, that you want to talk about primary care.

I do really just about everything that you said is the same for primary care. I think that not to sound like we're scaring people away, but because it is a one year program you've chosen to do it in one year and it's very intense. So the same kind of thing in terms of you know you're doing at least 20 hours a week of clinical in the spring, and that's usually.

Do you have days you have a full day of class and then again for every hour you're in class, you're talking a minimum of four hours of prep time. We really want to know that our students are doing well, so we do a lot of hands-on experience is a lot of case writeups that you have to do every week. We do modules we have prescription writing, so there's a lot of very specific things that you have to complete. I do want to mention though the two and three year program because I think people get a little confused sometimes.

And I think you know to think in terms there for our program. It's a 12 course program. Six of those courses are some of the foundational courses, and those can be taken one course at a time over 6 different semesters. For the three year program, or two courses at a time per semester for the two year program. But when you get to those last 6.

Horses when you're part of our clinical cohort, you must take those courses together an in sequence you. So you start in the fall, you take 2 courses in the fall.

Who won the spring two in the summer? And then you're done and those courses in the spring and the summer had the 20 hours a week of clinical associated. So just in terms of your planning and something that we like to make sure you know about.

Thank you, Becky, and it's similar for pizza cute anyone at all, but if you do part.

It.

Purple sequence again the hours and requirement do look different than when you're doing sort of your your foundational import. Sort of course is the next question is I have a main focus and pediatric palliative care. I'm currently a nurse and acute care nurse. After listening to this, I'm not sure if I should do a cute Chronicle critical care. So in terms of the critical care concentration, it's really designed for those who want to really work in critical care. If your passion is to work in palliative care, and that's certainly the acute, chronic concentration would well suit your needs, and you could certainly take that palliative care.

Minor, should you be interested in that, we do have students have done that when we're always happy to connect perspective students with our graduates if that would be helpful. If you want to work and have a joint practice in acute care and palliative care, then I may advise you differently, but I'm always happy to meet with students offline. My email is on the web page. You can certainly reach out to me by email and we can plan a time to need. If you have individual questions that are specific to you.

The next question was just looking for a clarification. The pizza cute must take a two year break before completing the Masters. So pizza cute is actually one year post orientation. So if you start a job as a registered nurse and you have about a three month orientation for example, and then you work or a year, you really taken like a 15 month break. It often ends up being about two years by the time you get that 12 years post orientation experience and come back and return for your clinical sequence.

We do allow students to take some of the core and foundational courses during that time, and again I'd be happy to talk to you about a plan of study offline. But we do require a minimum of one year post orientation of our inexperience before starting your clinical sequence. For all of the acute chronic concentrations. And I always emphasize it a little bit more is often helpful, and again, it will make often those clinical experiences in Graduate School more meaningful.

But then you need to program. It's really two years.

A little separate from the pizza cute. The next question is if you're in a BSN program currently, what work experience count towards the MSN critical?

Care required. Work experience, so it's pick you or cardiac ICU so emergency Department transport and.

Nick, you don't count again 'cause there are different populations. We really look at pediatric ICU or cardiac ICU. Some high level progressive care units. Not really step down units but more like high tech type units. We will consider if there's a lot of Ventilators and Technology, but really mostly pick using cardiac ICU's.

Perfect.

Happy birthday

I can answer this next question about the deadline. So the question is, I submitted my application for pieds primary for fall of 2021. I received an email highly highlighting in August 4th deadline. So once you submit your application, we review it to make sure everything is complete.

If you are missing materials, we give you one week to submit any missing materials. We do understand that people do submit early, so if you've submitted before the deadline, your real deadline to getting everything in is by the actual deadline. So I'm not sure if you applied for full time or part time, so it's either due by November 2nd or by March 15th.

I can answer this next question. It says as someone who earned a bachelor's degree in another field, what are some of the qualities you look for in an individual applying to the accelerated program, and I think certainly when I examine an application, the most important thing is that you really have clear cut goals and that you've done something to help you develop that goals. So you've shadowed people. You've had an opportunity to maybe work in primary care.

Uhm, you know, done something that really it wasn't just that you got the idea that being a nurse practitioner will be cool and you latched on to it and.

It harder and harder to get those shadowing experiences, but we really want you to know for sure that that being a nurse practitioner is what you really want.

I would agree, Heather, I don't know if you have anything to add from an admissions perspective for that question.

Um?

No, I think that you guys covered it.

Great, the next question is, could you talk a bit more about the program's theory courses? Vicki, do you want to talk about primary care 1st and then I can talk about the others as well?

I'm sure I'm I'm not quite sure exactly what they want to know that there's six courses we look at things like Child Development Research.

Pharmacology uhm.

Pathophysiology so that, uh, which has an Embryology component? That's a fabulous course that's taught by someone who is a practicing clinician and she can really pull together what the really important parts of pathophysiology are, too. So that you can develop a foundation for your future practice.

In our program, you're allowed to take two electives, and Jessica talked about how it could be part of the autism minor. Some of the global experiences I had the opportunity to go with the students to Guatemala an we had a a service learning experience where we apply primary care principles there. did I hit them all up?

I think the only thing I would add, um, just in terms of the theory courses, or as I mentioned, addition to the foundational courses and electives that Vicki described each of our programs has theory courses where you learn patient management. So certainly, for example, I'm going to can speak to our programs for the pizza cute programs you learn about management of diabetes, asthma, heart failure, neurological condition, seizures, all the different. Sort of things that you would think about.

He went to logic, conditions, etc. We actually sort of have two different almost tracks within that so that the critical care students might learn about asthma, and they're going to learn about non conventional modes of ventilation. In a, you know some more aggressive, an icy only therapies, while all the other students in the pizza Coop program would get again all of the emergency stabilization. Acute management of asthma and maybe more focus on outpatient discharge, transition to discharge type focus, knowing that they'll probably work in some specialty areas, pulmonary.

Inpatient hospitalist programs inpatient. You know, respiratory units. Emergency Department, things like that. So everybody gets asthma across. The spectrum, gets mechanical ventilation. It just might look a little more in depth in some parts of the program for critical care versus acute chronic, so there is really a theory course in the spring. And then in the summer where we focus and we teach those sort of things, we also have a role course, and I know Vicki and the primary care program structured slightly different than the pizza Cute.

But we both programs, including the neonatal program. I'll have roll components that are included, so all the different things you need to think about in terms of professional practice. So organizational theory, quality improvement, health policy and advocacy.

Patient safety, you know. A number of those sort of pieces and a significant part of this is required as part of a nurse practitioner program. But we also think it's important in practice is practicing nurse practitioners similarly to the pizza cute. The Neo Natal program again also has very specialized theory courses and for many of our courses we have expert lectures come in who are top in their field, who are at the bedside? Working in research, talking about all the different latest and greatest therapies that you're learning? Really. What is current?

Um and again for the noon it'll program. It is focused on learning those that theory. Inpatient management based on the noodle population across the care spectrum. So I hope that answers the question that was asked in terms of the theory courses, anything?

I just want to add a little bit of clarification about that Jessica. Sorry to interrupt, but in terms of primary care, each of our clinical courses where you do 20 hours a week of clinical and case seminar has a parallel didactic course, so again, that's where you would learn the foundational management of well child care. An variety of acute diseases, as she said like like asthma or urinary track infections.

Pneumonia, those kinds of things.

Think Vicki next question is for you. Looks like it's what experience is expected for the primary care nurse practitioner.

I I feel like I answered that, but again, we look at the whole the whole application, the whole student and what they bring an more than anything we want to make sure that you have clear goals of where what you hope to do with your program, an that you've done some kinds of shadowing experience, or had some experiences that really.

Indicates that you're committed to the program.

An all ad from an admissions perspective so.

Again, work experience isn't necessarily required for the primary care program, but what we do see we we see applicants coming from a lot of different fields. We actually have many applicants who are working as a nurse in acute care and decide they want primary Care now or they are also working in primary care in with a different population.

So just to emphasize what Vicki said, um, really in your application.

Explaining your interest in this program and population and acuity level. But for MSN students they do come from a variety of experiences.

Great thank you both. Click the next question is how many students are typically accepted into the part time neonatal MP program? So the in terms of looking at acceptance in our cohort size is really the thing that we may be. Limit our cohort size 2 is for two things. One is we want a certain kind of learning that we can provide very participative type learning and the 2nd is we need to make sure that we have robots, clinical sites and for that reason we really do limit that neonatal cohort to less than 10, often smaller than that often.

8 or less. Uhm, so that's your clinical cohort, so we may have more than that sort of part time students working, you know, on two to three year plan of studies, but when you get to that last year of your plan of study, or if you're a full time student, your one year plan of study when you're in your clinical sequence in a group of most likely no more than seven or eight and maybe even last depending on the year, because again, we want to make sure that you have good solid experience and solid high level Nick use, and that's important to us to be able to provide.

Robust clinical experience as a small program.

And you also get to know the faculty very intimately and they're able to provide really direct feedback and mentorship and support as part of that.

The next question is if we applied to the BSN MSN program with a specialty chosen and we do not get accepted into the specialty or our application gets denied all around will be considered for the BSN program or other programs. I'm not sure that I can. I'm the best person to answer that.

Yep.

I can answer that, uhm, so it depends. If you have a strong BSN application, but perhaps your MSN portion isn't as strong, we might just offer you admission to the BSN portion and then you would have the opportunity to re apply to the MSN program as a current student.

It depends on the specialty that you're choosing. You might be considered for another specialty that's very rare. Just again due to the size we are always planning ahead for our clinical cohorts, but would what would most likely happen is that you could be offering admission to just the BSN program.

Great thank you. It looks like the next question is how have clinical placement and hands on simulation learning that impacted by covid. I'm applying to the MSN program for the critical care concentration and Pizza Cute. I know how important hands-on learning and practices with many technologies we use in the Picu so certainly to be fully transparent Cove. It certainly has impacted exactly how we deliver the education, but I think that our commitment has been to maintaining or single standards. As usual. Anna very robust.

Um experience and I'll talk about this with Pizza Cute, an neonatal actually is as a whole, so our students are.

Have really a lot of the hands on simulation. Learning was in January and throughout the spring semester. In terms of the simulation that we've done, we were able to do lots of hands-on simulation before covid really caused us to not be on campus for a period of time. We were able to do actually remote simulation so the neonatal group did lots of remote much of what you do isn't as a nurse practitioner is sort of that head of bed or foot of bed experience directing care, so we were able to have.

Some faculty in a SIM Lab and have our students on blue jeans. A web based platform like zoom, directing Aaron managing situations, and do it difficult, difficult conversations and a briefing. Similarly, the neonatal students did a number of different situations like similarly in terms of more of a remote type Simulation which where they got very robust experiences in terms of clinical. As with most programs in the country, we did have a period where we were asked to pause or clinical experiences by our various healthcare system partners.

We have all of our pizza cute and critical care students back in Clinicals. Now we have Neo Natal in some waiting shortly who will be returning to clinical to finish out their hours so some of our students are delayed in graduation this year. But they're all getting very robust, very wonderful experiences. So how does it look different so usually are critical care concentration students go across the country for an emerging clinical for about 6 or 7 weeks and this year they.

Instead of going across the country, have all stayed regionally. We usually send students to a number of states, which obviously has not been possible. 'cause of Covid, but they're all high level pick you is getting wonderful experiences as part of their finishing out their clinical hours. So we've been able to maintain that in terms of what this fall looks like. We certainly do a bit of simulation in the fall, both with our physical assessment course. It's in the fall as well as with technology labs, an unital simulation type skills, and things like that, so.

We will be in our simulation lab this fall with our students in PE, but we will be there socially distance as much as possible and wearing PE so that we can still teach hands-on physical assessment so that the critical care students who take that technologies chorus can practice intevation an chest tube, Mens and central line placement and all those sort of things. So that's the current plan again, everything is subject to change with covad, but we have lots of plans, abcs and dies in order to maintain those experiences.

I mean, I think that are returned to clinical has really been leveraged in part with our again long-term preceptors relationships we have with our healthcare partner facilities, the presence of our Nye who've been willing to continue to teach and be preceptors. And I don't know Vicky. If you have anything to add from that primary care side or Alicia or Heather, a few things to act with clinical site placement perspective.

I'm happy to respond, but I'd love to give Alicia Chance. Is there anything that you want to add to that?

I just wanted, you know, reiterate what's already been said is that you know we are actively finding the clinical sites for all of the students in all the programs. Has it changed with Cove it yes it has. But it doesn't mean that we still haven't been able to get the students in. And I think it's also important to say that you still are required to have 500 of direct patient care hours before you can graduate from our program. So while we may have additional simulation hours to maybe fill in some of the gaps.

Because of Cove it you still will not graduate until you actually have that 500 hours of drug patient care.

I can answer this next question. Uhm, can you discuss letters of recommendation? Who do you value hearing from?

So the accelerated BSN, BSN, MSN programs require 2 letters of recommendation. They like to see an academic and professional reference and the MSN program requires 3 letters of recommendation. We like to see one academic and two professional for both programs. You can submit up to five letters of recommendation. You don't have to submit up to five, but this is a good option if you're really deciding between.

Two people you don't have to decide. These are rigorous academic program, so we really do value and academic reference. We understand if you've been out of school for a while, you may not be in touch with faculty or advisor. You might be able to find someone from your professional life who can comment on your academic ability. Perhaps you completed a research or key? Why project? We like to hear from your direct supervisor and then someone else you've known in a professional capacity such as.

A previous supervisor, we really want to know really all the wonderful qualities that would make you a nurse and Nurse Practitioner. Your leadership ability, your ability to be flexible. Think on your feet. Your passion for health care, your professional interests, and we really value quality over name recognition. So it's wonderful if you know the Dean or the CNO or someone high up. But we would much rather see equality recommendation from a name that we've never heard of.

Um, it you don't get extra points for having someone higher up or having an alumni write your letter. We're really focused on quality.

Or

It kinda sad to that. I think having someone's Jamie saying focus on quality, but someone who can really speak to you that it's clear for reading the letter that they know you and they know your talents and abilities. I think is really important as well.

I'd like to add one more thing and that's you know one of the neat things about teaching at Penn is how incredibly fabulous our students are. It they keep me on my toes. They are so smart an have done so many really interesting things. I when I look at a recommendation, I'd love some specific examples, every recommendation it sounds like.

You know people are smart and flexible and have leadership qualities, but if they can give of a specific example of something that happened in clinical or something, an opportunity that they really showed leadership ability, that really means a lot to me.

I can also answer the next question. Our students applying to the BSN MSN program with the neonatal specialty. Are they in the same category as nurses applying to the MSN program? No, so you are evaluated separately. There are a lot of different criteria for each program and we understand.

Someone who is not currently a nurse is very different than someone who currently is a nurse.

Looks like the next question is where can we find contact information for this panel for future communication so I know my email address is on the webpage. Vicki, I believe years as well.

Yes.

Um and Heather Analicia. I don't recall if your emails are on the website, but certainly you can reach Vicki and I threw the Nursing School of Nursing website through associated program pages, the.

Associate program director's for Pizza. Cue Dan Malays. Molly Mae from the new donors practitioner program. Their email addresses are available online as well.

And I could take my right into the chat here as well too. So if anybody had any questions.

And maybe other could do the same for for years.

Yep.

Thank you, Alicia. That would be great.

The next question is a primary care question. Uhm, the applicant applied to the full time primary pediatric primary care program with the long-term goal of building a primary care practice. After obtaining experience and wanted to know if he should use his electives to build his practice and what I would say about any of the electives. The neat thing about electives are the opportunity to learn more about something that you're really interested in.

It will enhance your goals and enhance your practice. So definitely choose some courses that that would do that.

And in terms of the size of the primary care call, work between 20 and 25.

And just tap on for the peace, peace acute care cohorts usually have a total cohort of all the concentrations of 35 to 40. We again, our limitation is always the amount of robust clinical sites that we have, but usually it's 10 or less in critical care, 10 or less and oncology and in the balance in the acute chronic Constipation. And we've already talked about the new NATO cohorts.

The next question is when deciding between primary an acute care, what are the most important things to consider and Vicky, I'll ask you to weigh in here as well, but I think the most important thing is what population you want to care for. Again, it's not that you don't want to work nights and weekends. It's not that you want to be outpatient versus inpatient, and if you come and talk to me, I'd say in my office, but the video conference I'll ask is the first question. I'll ask you, what do you want to do when your done? What kind of patients do you want to take care of what you want your role to look like? And I think those are the questions you could ask yourself that help guide you between.

Pediatric primary care an pediatric acute care if you want to do you know take care of kids who are ill have very complex illness who have complex chronic illness than the pizza cute is the right program for you if if you're looking at more well child care. Anticipatory guidance care of common pediatric disorders. Utah's new monia otitis sprains. I'm sure I'm missing things. Vicki that you can add to then that's more of a pediatric primary care focus.

Now I think that was very well stated, Jessica, thank you.

Alicia was there anything else that you wanted to add?

No, I think that pretty much summed it up.

And how about Heather, or anything that you want to add as well?

No, I think, uh, it's good. I think getting clinical spots is going to be difficult as we move forward, but we will work really hard to find the robust learning experiences that you're all looking for.

It looks like there's one final question in the chat. Even applying to an MSN program, what would be a competitive undergraduate GPA? Maybe we can talk about science GPA as well as undergrad GPA here. I don't know Heather or Jamie. If you want to take this question.

A sure uhm. So I'll tell you the average incoming GPA is around a 3.5. I would say anything over a 3.2 is competitive. Again. We have a holistic application process so I really don't want to discourage anyone from applying because we look at all aspects of your application.

We also look into your science GPA, which is a combination of if you took these courses, biology, chemistry, um, pathophysiology, pharmacology and we look at that specific GPA as well.

And typically a competitive GPA for that is around a 3.2, but again, just to emphasize, we have a holistic admissions process and I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from applying because they have under a 3.2 GPA.

Are there any additional questions or maybe questions we answered that didn't fully answer your question? This time is really for you. We want to make sure that you feel like you have clear information.

I will just advanced to the next slide that if you do have additional questions that come up after or you have a specific situation that or questions specifically about yourself, you can always email us at and missions at nursing.upenn.edu. Or of course reach out to the faculty as well.

OK, well no ones asked asked a question in the past minute. So uhm, I again just want to think Jessica Heather, Alicia, Vicki, Molly and of course all of you for taking some time out of your day to day to listen to this web and R.

Again, any additional questions can be emailed and you will get this recording in a couple of days as well. So good luck with your applications. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions. An we look forward to working with you.