Calli Cook, DNP, APRN, FNP-C

Co-Chair Neurology Speciality Practice Group, American Association of Nurse Practitioners
NEF Scholar, 2018-2019

Thank you for the opportunity to share my story during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected healthcare delivery in many ways, and, for many advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), face-to-face care has been restricted to essential encounters only. Many APRNs had to quickly adapt their skills from face-to-face healthcare delivery to synchronous audio-visual telemedicine services to ensure patients received timely high-quality healthcare.

The urgent need for the implementation of telemedicine services condensed the learning curve for many users. One method to meet the needs of APRNs quickly adopting telemedicine was through continuing education and I was able to meet this need this through the creation of a free telemedicine continuing education module delivered through the Emory Nursing Experience and a webinar hosted by the American Academy of Neurology. Through asynchronous and synchronous learning methods I was able to increase knowledge about the regulatory changes to telemedicine during the COVID-19 public health emergency as well as introduce techniques used to create a therapeutic environment in a synchronous non-face-to-face healthcare encounter and perform a neurological exam. APRNs are dynamic healthcare providers that passionately serve patients and through my work on telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic I hope to enable other APRNs to feel confident in their ability to provide telemedicine services.