Advanced Practice Nurse (Nurse Practitioner) - Primary Care

Nurse Practitioner

Help Located in the city's historic Southside district, the Birmingham VA Medical Center (BVAMC) is a 313-bed acute tertiary care facility providing medical and surgical services to Veterans across Alabama and neighboring states. Serving as a regional referral center, the BVAMC currently operates 139 beds and offers care across nearly all medical and surgical specialties and subspecialties. Most staff physicians hold joint appointments with the VA and its primary academic affiliate, the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The BVAMC also operates nine community-based outpatient clinics across North Alabama. VA offers a comprehensive total rewards package: VA Nurse Total Rewards. This position is eligible for the Education Debt Reduction Program (EDRP), a student loan payment reimbursement program. You must meet specific eligibility requirements per VHA policy and submit your EDRP application within four months of appointment. Program Approval, award amount (up to $200,000) & eligibility period (one to five years) are determined by the VHA Education Loan Repayment Services program office after review of the EDRP application. Former EDRP participants ineligible to apply. Learn more.

Pay: Competitive salary, regular salary increases, potential for performance awards Paid Time Off: 50 days of paid time off per year (26 days of annual leave, 13 days of sick leave, 11 paid Federal holidays per year). Retirement: Traditional federal pension (5 years vesting) and federal 401K with up to 5% in contributions by VA. Insurance: Federal health/vision/dental/term life/long-term care (many federal insurance programs can be carried into retirement). Licensure: 1 full and unrestricted license from any US State or territory.

Major Duties/Responsibilities for this position include but are not limited to:

• The Nurse Practitioner (NP) is an advanced practice registered nurse that works under a Scope of Practice and has prescriptive authority to diagnose and treat acute and chronic health problems. The NP follows established guidelines to provide coordinated health care to the adult and geriatric population.
• The NP performs independently or in collaboration with the provider to carry out the plan of care for the Veteran. He/she appropriately delegates to other Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) members, but is responsible for diagnosing and treating medical problems, care coordination to higher level of care, and making complex clinical decisions. The NP will serve as the leader of the PACT teamlet, that consists of an RN, LPN/Clinical Associate, and Advanced Medical Support Assistant (AMSA).
• The NP optimizes care delivery and provides care to patients with acute problems, patients undergoing transitions of care, and patients with chronic conditions who would benefit in developing and performing self-management skills for chronic conditions especially diabetes, hypertension, CHF, hyperlipidemia, pain, and depression.
• The NP utilizes motivational interviewing techniques to facilitate patient development of patient driven goals for health optimization and will be required to attend a formal Motivational Interviewing course. The NP must demonstrate leadership in delivering and improving holistic care by utilizing health promotion and disease prevention and whole health strategies.
• The NP uses face to face, telephone, and video virtual care visits, and secure messaging, to provide care to patients. The NP develops the appropriate plan of care and tracks patient outcomes to determine if interventions are effective.
• The NP will document timely, appropriately, and effectively in the medical record; ensure the patient's care plan contains medical recommendations for clinically indicated care; and communicate test results and plans of care to patients or ensure this is accomplished by clinical support staff in a timely and effective manner.
• The NP performs clinical assessments; triages face to face or virtually; in collaboration with the patient to identify goals for optimizing health; provides patient/family education to improve outcomes, evaluates patient's progress or lack of progress toward achieving goals; and performs case management activities and care coordination activities for those patients assigned to the team who require those services.
• The NP will participate in team performance improvement and sustainment activities to optimize team efficiency and care delivery; provide leadership to the PACT including shared delegation of appropriate care and care processes to appropriate team members.
• The NP will report directly to the Primary Care Director and/or Associate Chief of Staff of Primary Care.

Work Schedule: Monday - Friday 8:00 AM - 4:30 PM or 7:30am -4:00pm. Subject to change based on the needs of the agency.