NP or PA Rapid Response Team & ICU Support Team

Vanderbilt University Medical Center•Nashville, TN

About The Position

The Advanced Practice Provider (APP) (NP or Physician Assistant) is an integral member of the multidisciplinary healthcare team, delivering expert care in the Critical Care setting. This role involves managing high-acuity intensive care unit (ICU) patients with unstable conditions who require intensive oversight, frequent rounding, and specialized care. Patients may include those in medical and surgical ICUs with complex needs requiring advanced interventions. The APP is responsible for managing complex conditions while ensuring delivery of safe, high-quality care. This role requires advanced medical knowledge, clinical judgment, technical proficiency, professionalism, and excellent interpersonal communication skills. The APP is also accountable for timely and compliant documentation, ongoing professional development, and competency validation. With a strong foundation of medical knowledge, the APP combines evidence-based practice with clinical expertise to meet the unique needs of critical care patients. The rapid response NP/PA provides healthcare across the hospital when a patient outside of an ICU has a change in clinical status that requires immediate interventions to evaluate and stabilize their condition. The rapid response team (also known as the Critical Care Outreach Team - CCOT) provides 24 hour coverage across the hospital for episodic care when patients have an acute change in clinical status outside of an ICU. The rapid response/CCOT NP or PA works with the primary team and supervising intensivists to evaluate a patient’s clinical status and identify interventions to stabilize any acute changes while considering moving the patient to a higher level of care. RRT/CCOT is responsible for documentation and data collection related to rapid response and STAT activations as well as education to patients, nurses, and physicians in relation to rapid response and STAT calls The Critical Care APP works in collaboration with a multidisciplinary health care team. The NP/PA provides healthcare in critical care settings, including surgical and medical ICUs. The APP has didactic education, clinical competency and national certification in identified area of clinical practice. Upon moving to a new ICU, the APP will receive adequate training and support before moving to a more independent role within the ICU for 8 continuous weeks. Each year, the APP will spend blocks of time working on the RRT/CCOT as well as supporting a new ICU for several months where staffing shortages are occurring. The ICU Support Team and Rapid Response team is a dynamic and novel advanced practice provider team who work with physicians across the hospital and the different ICUs to provide care to the most sick and vulnerable patient population. Blocks of several months at a time will be spent staffing either RRT/CCOT or working within a specific ICU.

Requirements

Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (AGACNP) or Physician Assistant (PA) license required
LIC-Licensed Nurse Practitioner - Tennessee
LIC-Physician's Assistant Certified - Tennessee
LIC-Registered Nurse - Tennessee
Master's

Nice To Haves

Critical Care RN or APP experience preferred
Relevant Work Experience

Responsibilities

Obtains and documents a health history; performs and documents complete, system-focused, or symptom-specific physical examination, assessment and plan of care.
In collaboration, provides healthcare services for primary, acute and complex care of patients and manages patients’ overall care, identifying expected outcomes for diagnoses.
Orders, performs, interprets and collects data using appropriate assessment techniques, relevant supporting diagnostic information and diagnostic procedures where indicated.
Forms differential diagnoses and treats acute and chronic conditions.
Prescribes therapeutic interventions for both pharmacologic, non-pharmacologic and surgical, needed to achieve expected outcomes.
Utilizes evidence-based, approved practice protocols in planning and implementing care.
Initiates appropriate referrals and consultations
Provides specialty specific consultation services upon request and within a specialty scope of practice.
Facilitates the patient’s transition between and within health care settings, such as admitting, transferring, and discharging patients.