NP or PA Neuro ICU Nights

Vanderbilt University Medical Center•Nashville, TN

19h

About The Position

The Advanced Practice Provider (APP), either a Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant, is an integral member of the multidisciplinary healthcare team, delivering expert care to high-acuity patients in the critical care setting. The role manages patients with unstable and complex conditions requiring intensive oversight, frequent rounding, specialized care, and advanced interventions. The APP uses advanced medical knowledge, clinical judgment, technical proficiency, professionalism, and effective communication to provide safe, high-quality care, while maintaining timely and compliant documentation, continuing professional development, and competency validation. The position is based in Vanderbilt’s Neurological ICU, a 23-bed ICU with 12 step-down beds and a large referral base serving neurology and neurosurgical patients from across the Southeastern United States. As a Comprehensive Stroke Center, the unit provides specialized care for conditions including brain tumors, strokes, spinal cord injuries, neuromuscular disorders, and other diseases affecting the brain, peripheral nerves, and spinal cord. The multidisciplinary critical care team is on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Care focuses on neurological monitoring, recognition of decline, early intervention, recovery, and maintaining neurological status. This is a full-time night position with three 13-hour shifts per week. The APP obtains and documents histories and examinations, assesses patients and develops care plans, manages primary, acute, and complex care in collaboration with others, orders and interprets diagnostic studies, diagnoses and treats acute and chronic conditions, prescribes appropriate interventions, uses evidence-based protocols, makes referrals and consultations, and supports patient transitions between care settings.

Requirements

Master’s degree.
Relevant work experience; the listed experience level is less than one year.
Current Tennessee license as a Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant, and Tennessee Registered Nurse licensure as applicable to the role.
Advanced clinical knowledge, judgment, and technical proficiency for critical care practice.
Excellent neurological assessment skills.
Ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing and maintain professional relationships with patients, families, and healthcare team members.
Ability to practice ethically, maintain current evidence-based knowledge, and provide patient- and family-centered care.

Responsibilities

Obtain and document health histories; perform and document complete, system-focused, or symptom-specific examinations, assessments, and plans of care.
Collaborate in providing primary, acute, and complex patient care; manage patients’ overall care and identify expected outcomes for diagnoses.
Order, perform, interpret, and collect data using appropriate assessment techniques and relevant diagnostic information and procedures.
Form differential diagnoses and treat acute and chronic conditions.
Prescribe pharmacologic, non-pharmacologic, and surgical therapeutic interventions as needed to achieve expected outcomes.
Use evidence-based, approved practice protocols to plan and implement care.
Initiate appropriate referrals and consultations.
Provide specialty-specific consultation services upon request and within the scope of practice.
Facilitate patient transitions between and within healthcare settings, including admissions, transfers, and discharges.
Maintain timely and compliant documentation and ongoing professional development and competency validation.
Educate patients, families, students, and healthcare team members on clinical topics and the application of clinical knowledge.
Use scientific evidence and clinical data to evaluate and improve care practices and patient outcomes.