|
Introducing Our New Healthy You Columnist
Today we will introduce a new writer for the Healthy You column. Ann Marie Licari, APRN (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse). New to the North Country Hospital family, Ann Marie will be taking up the reins from Winnie Jones. While there will be other contributors from North Country Hospital and Health System staff from time to time, Ann Marie will be the primary writer and editor of this column.
Ann Marie has been a registered nurse for 16 years. She has worked in a variety of specialty areas including Maternal-Child, Emergency, Medical-Surgical and Home Health. She came to Vermont as a Travel Nurse for Copley Hospital where she became convinced Vermont was her new home and remained at Copley as Nursing Supervisor. Seven and a half years later, she completed her Master’s Degree at the University of Vermont and became licensed as a Family Nurse Practitioner. Her new role required a new position and she found one here with North Country Hospital where she has been working, and learning she adds, in the Emergency Department as a Mid-Level Provider since December, 2005. She has enjoyed working with excellent physicians and nurses, all of whom have helped to mentor her into her new role.
Her decision to further her education and take on the role as a primary care provider for patients stemmed from her desire to understand better the health problems patients were facing as well as assist them in improving their health. The National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties has outlined domains of practice for nurse practitioners and the core competencies within them. Management of Patient’s Health and Illness Status is one of these domains and Health Promotion and Disease Prevention is one area where this is achieved. One other domain is the Nurse Practitioner as Teacher and Coach. While Ann Marie states she takes every opportunity a busy Emergency Room can afford her to coach patient’s how they can better manage their health, the chance to do this through this weekly article was too great of an opportunity to let pass by.
Her training while including much information on disease and illness, its causes and treatments, including prescribing medications, also included the nurse’s approach of looking at patients in a holistic way. Obtaining information over time while building a trusting relationship allows you to understand how a person’s lifestyle and events occurring in their life may impact their health. These are referred to as Health Patterns and they include: health perception and management; nutritional status and metabolism, activity-exercise, sleep and rest, coping and stress tolerance; relationships and roles we play within them; self-esteem issues; sexuality and personal values and beliefs. Ann Marie expects many topics for this article will fall into these patterns, allowing her to provide to patients what may not be possible in short provider visits when ill.
In addition to her training and expertise in the health care field, Ann Marie has also explored Complementary Therapies. Part of her learning has come from receiving complementary therapies herself as well as learning from herbalists, psychologists and studying. Last year she went to England for two months where she spent time with a biodynamical farmer and practicing permaculture and with a Medical Herbalist, a licensed provider in the health care system in Europe. Complementary therapies are therapies considered outside of medicine, but generally can work very well together with medicine. Some of these include massage, meditation and certain nutritional and herbal therapies including many other mind-body approaches. Increasingly greater use by the public creates the necessity to educate ourselves about these therapies as well as make available information that enables patients to use them safely with their medical therapies. Understanding how they work, the theories behind them and what results can be expected can better assist the public in using their best judgment when using them. Ann Marie feels this information would be a great addition to this article in its focus on educating the public on managing their health.
When Ann Marie is not here assisting patients in the Emergency Room she is home on her two acres in Elmore tending her two goats and six chickens with the help of her English springer spaniel, Knightly and her cat, Queenie. She is expecting baby goats in May and hopes for baby chickens sometime this season as well! She has been raising animals for food, milk and eggs for three years now and has enjoyed the impact this has had on her health.
“HEALTHY YOU” is a weekly column prepared by health care providers and staff at North Country Hospital and Health System. Please call Nancy Goss, NCH Community Relations, 334-3225, for information or to suggest a topic for this column.
|
