“I love the opportunity to get to know my patients better in the outpatient clinic.”
“In my first position as a nurse, I worked on a kidney and liver transplant step-down unit. I’ve been fascinated with transplant ever since. It’s such a unique specialty, and there are so many good outcomes. It makes me want to come to work every day.
I’ve been a Nurse Practitioner with the Penn Transplant Institute (PTI) since 2012. I started on the inpatient side, caring for kidney, pancreas, liver, hand, and uterus transplant patients. In 2021, I switched to the outpatient kidney and pancreas transplant setting. In this role, I spend the bulk of my time seeing and caring for patients after their transplant surgeries. I also spend some of my time doing pre-evaluation visits with patients coming in for potential kidney or pancreas transplants.
While I enjoyed working in the inpatient unit, I love the opportunity to get to know my patients better in the outpatient clinic. I have much more one-on-one time to sort through their issues, provide detailed care, and carefully monitor their progression. I get to be a part of the full circle of care for many who come through our transplant center.
Our transplant team is like a family. Once you join the team, you never want to leave and many of us have been here for a long time. From the attending physicians to the nursing staff, medical assistant team, and managerial support, everyone in PTI is very supportive. There are also opportunities to work on special projects. I’ve been working on the ETCLC [End Stage Renal Disease Treatment Choices Learning Collaborative] project, a 5-year, nationwide endeavor to ramp up the number of kidney transplants and decrease the kidney discard rate.
One of the things I am focused on now is accessing special resources for patients. It’s given me the opportunity to collaborate with people I may not have worked with before, and I’ve learned much more about the resources available to our patients. Working through these situations has reinforced the feeling that as part of this team, we are never alone when we need support!
I have met and cared for so many wonderful people over the years. Our patients are truly grateful for what we do. I love hearing their stories and knowing I’m doing something good. It drives me to do better and be better as a provider.
Switching to the outpatient unit has also given me more time to spend with my family. I have a young daughter, two cats and an amazing husband. In our free time, we like to ski, hike and spend time with family and friends. I also started a knitting business and serve as adjunct faculty at Drexel teaching an acute care nurse practitioner course.”