Community Health Center’s (CHC) Nurse Practitioner Residency Training Program is a 12 month, full-time salaried position.  The goal of this program is to provide new nurse practitioners (recent graduates of Master and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs) with the depth, breadth, volume, and intensity of clinical training necessary for them to serve as primary care providers in complex environments such as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) and other safety net settings.

The program structure includes several components such as:

• Precepted Clinics where residents develop their own patient panel while having a primary care provider (MD or Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRN)) exclusively assigned during precepted sessions.
• Specialty Rotations: Ten rotations in areas of high volume and clinical complexity that are most commonly encountered in FQHCs.
• Didactic Education Sessions: Scheduled learning sessions on a variety of complex, clinical challenges commonly encountered in FQHCs/Nurse-Managed Health Clinics (NMHC).
• Independent Clinic Sessions: During independent sessions, nurse practitioner residents work as a member of a team and sees patients at the delegation of the primary care providers, who remain available for consultations. Independent sessions are also a time when residents can see their own patients in follow-up.

This program is training new nurse practitioners who are committed to practice as primary care providers in safety net settings and CHC’s model of high performance health systems.  The program provides immersion in a model of care that includes: interprofessional care and collaborative practice; integrated behavioral health/primary care; advanced access; chronic care model; planned care; panel management;  team-based care; prevention focused; and expert use of electronic technology.   Feedback, coaching, mentoring and peer evaluation are special features of the residency, along with formal precepting and instruction.

CHC’s Nurse Practitioner Residency Training Program has clear learning objectives and a formal evaluation component. Additional features include participation in training in quality improvement methods/clinical microsystems and leadership development, robust online evaluation program (myevaluations.com).

Evaluations of this program include pre-and post-residency self-assessments, pre-and post-didactic sessions completed weekly, specialty rotations completed monthly at the end of each rotation and precepted rotations completed quarterly by residents and preceptors. Another element of the evaluations is the weekly reflective journal. The journals are an important and valuable part of personal and professional growth and also provide valuable insight for program leaders in understanding the challenges inherent in the transition from new nurse practitioner to primary care provider. All evaluations become part of the clinical portfolio that is provided for the resident at the end of the program.