Providing Care for Long Term Patients

Recognizing Advanced Practice Provider Week

In “The Nurse Practitioner in Long-Term Care: Guideline for Clinical Practice,” White & Truax (2007) address the growing trend of utilizing the nurse practitioner in the skilled nursing facility to manage patients as well as to serve as a practical resource for managing conditions commonly encountered within the geriatric patient population. Within the nursing home setting, the nurse practitioner performs the initial admission assessment for new long-term care admissions, sub- [...]

A Closer Look at Liaison Psychiatry

Recognizing Advanced Practice Provider Week

Who we are: I am an ANCC-certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner who is part of the part-time Liaison Psychiatry service at UVM CVPH Medical Center.  Our team, consisting of two NPs and a psychiatrist, has been in service for almost four years now, and we have been quite busy! What we are: Liaison psychiatry specializes in the interface between general medicine and psychiatry, usually taking place in a hospital or medical setting.  The role of the consultation-l [...]

A Crucial Link in the Chain of Care

Recognizing Advanced Practice Provider Week

At CVPH, teamwork is a hallmark of providing the care our patients need every single day. Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) are a crucial link in that chain of care. As a NP, I’m proud to be a part of the team that helps our patients achieve successful outcomes, and I want to share what this role looks like with you. Education and training prepare nurse practitioners and physician assistants to do many of the common health tasks that physicians do, including (but [...]

A Closer Look at Advanced Practice Providers at CVPH

Recognizing Advanced Practice Provider Week

This week we celebrate Advanced Practice Providers, or APPs, at CVPH. Every one of our APPs plays a vital role in the teams that care for our patients, and I wanted to pull back the curtain to give you a glimpse of what we do and how our roles started. To begin, APPs include nurse practitioners (NPs), certified nurse-midwives (CNMs), certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) and physician assistants (PAs). When you hear about certified nurse-midwives (CNMs), pregnancy and childbirth [...]

Heartwarming Honor for CVPH Cardiologist

When Nidal Makhoul, MD reflects back on his more than two decades of providing care in the North Country, he spends a lot of time thinking about his patients. “The best moment is when you see a patient who is in trouble or might be dying, but you’re able to help save that patient’s life or alleviate suffering,” Dr. Makhoul recalled. “And then you get to keep seeing and talking to that person year after year because they survived.”  One of Dr. Ma [...]

Expanding Our Understanding: Do Masks Work?

There is growing evidence that some people who got infected with COVID-19 despite wearing a mask are still alive today because of that mask. And that gives us a new way of thinking about the protection face coverings provide. From early on in the pandemic, you’ve heard from me, my colleagues here at CVPH and public health officials across the country bang the drum on the importance of wearing masks and how they can help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. The initial selling point [...]

Painting a New Picture

A Message from Michelle LeBeau, RN, BS, MHRM | President & COO

The basic rule to maintaining any budget, whether it’s your family budget or the ledger of an organization like ours, is that you need to have more money coming in than you have going out. When that balance is disrupted, changes must be made. To meet your household’s immediate needs and sustain the family going forward, you adjust by reducing spending and finding ways to increase your cash flow. The same actions are required at CVPH, today. Despite our great work, our average loss [...]

Emergency Department Receives National Certification Champion Award

The Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing (BCEN), the benchmark for board certification across the emergency nursing spectrum, today recognized our ED as one of their 2020 National Certification Champion Award winners for our commitment to emergency nursing excellence through specialty nursing certification. “We are very proud of this award because CVPH has a long history of supporting nursing staff in pursuit of professional specialty certification. Objectively speaking, having boa [...]

Transition Success Program Helps Patient Get Home Sooner

The Difference Your Donations Make

A recent foot surgery patient is a shining example of what The Foundation of CVPH’s Transition Success program can do. Beverly Duffina knows her way around the shops and stores across the North Country. But as the region began to slowly re-open following an initial lockdown in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mooers, NY resident suddenly found herself sitting in a hospital bed instead of searching for sales. “I’m trying to get better to go shopping,” B [...]

Foundation Scholarship Program Helps Employees, Students

The Difference Your Donations Make

CVPH Clinical Assistant Meaghan Wells has a lot to balance between work, pursuing a degree at Clinton Community College to become a registered nurse and home life. “My days are very busy, because I also have 3 young kids at home," Meaghan said, as she described what she loves most about them. "My daughter is into dance. The 2 younger ones are free spirited. They do what they want." As for what it is about her children that makes her smile: "When they all get along [...]