Dr. Denise “De-Dee” Foti and Dr. Sonia Vishneski have a longstanding friendship and working relationship that began when they first started working together at the Jefferson College of Health Sciences in 2007.
When Dr. Foti later moved to ECPI University, she encouraged Dr. Vishneski to follow. There, Dr. Foti became chief nurse administrator, and they went through the strenuous accreditation process together.
Dr. Foti and Dr. Vishneski are partnering together once again to promote and build a relationship between NKU and the Salem Veterans Affairs Health Care System that will allow FNP and PMHNP graduates to train for the next steps in their career.
“We were able to connect this way because of my relationship with Sonia,” Dr. Foti, NKU’s interim co-School of Nursing director, says. “We have a trusting relationship, and she’s been knee-deep in it just like me.”
Each track offers a one-year residency providing care to veterans with diverse health needs. This partnership is the only one of its kind in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
“We're building on what they’ve completed in their nurse practitioner program,” Dr. Vishneski, program director for the mental health nurse practitioner residency, says. “I think it's very important that we continue to have an academic partnership where we can get expertise and input from our faculty and from nursing leadership who can help direct that continued extension of their learning. I see that as a continuum of their learning, which is just going to make them that much stronger, practicing providers.”
For each resident, 80 percent of their time is clinical and will be centered around outpatient care—mental health and primary care—for veterans.
There are also smaller rotations available to residents in each track, such as cardiology, dermatology and endocrinology.
“We work closely and give them feedback, but they also give us feedback. We want to make sure if there's something that's not meeting their needs that we modify it,” Vishneski says. “If it's in our grasp, we try to make it happen when they really have something they want to experience or be a part of.”
The other 20 percent is didactic time, which is spent with subject matter experts who help residents build on the knowledge they learned in their nurse practitioner program.
The relationship between NKU and Salem Veterans Affairs allows not only growth opportunities for nurse practitioner graduates but also the chance to shape education for future NKU students.
“It's a partnership, right? They're also working with our concentration coordinators to see what their programs look like. They’re continuing that education and ensuring that they're growing as nurse practitioners,” Dr. Foti says. “They're able to come back and help us with resources that help our students become better practitioners. It really is a partnership in trying to ensure that everybody grows. Everybody wins.”
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