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What is a Nurse Practitioner?
A Nurse Practitioner is a registered nurse with several years of advanced clinical and nursing training. Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (PNP's) have completed 2 years of academic nursing education as well as 2 years of clinical rotations in hospitals and clinic settings. They are required, as are MD's, to maintain their clinical acumen through ongoing medical education each year. Our doctors and PNP's work closely together. We consult one another on difficult or complicated patients and we schedule regular clinical meetings with PNP's and MD's to discuss up-to-date management of common pediatric illnesses.
As part of their training, PNPs learn how to perform examinations, prescribe medications, order diagnostic procedures, educate staff and families, and provide continuity of care between inpatient and outpatient settings.
What Do PNP's Do?
We are very fortunate at Lexington Pediatrics to have such wonderful PNP's on staff. (Click here for practitioner biographies.) Our PNP's see patients from the newborn stage through adolescence, for routine well-child checks as well as sick visits, follow up visits, lactation consultations, weight issues (obesity, eating disorders), asthma evaluations, wart removal, and gynecological examinations. They are able to write prescriptions. Nurse practitioners are a vital part of Lexington Pediatrics' provider staff.
Usually, in the first few years of a child's life, there are about a dozen routine well-child checks. Four or five of these routine visits will typically be with a PNP.
Please contact your primary care physician or our medical director if you have additional questions about the role of PNP's at Lexington Pediatrics.
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SPOTLIGHT
Our nurse practitioners are available for Travel Clinic appointments. If your family, or your teenager, is planning an overseas trip, please call the office as soon as possible to schedule a Travel visit.
Have your itinerary available. We will review vaccinations to ensure they're up to date, including necessary travel vaccines, review water, sun, and insect safety, and provide any additional information and medication necessary depending on the destination.
It's best to schedule the travel visit several months before your trip.
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KNOW MORE |
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The NP field began in the late 1950's. The first NP academic training program was created in 1965 by Loretta Ford and Henry Silver, a nurse and a physician. According to a recent study, there are more than 141,000 nurse practitioners with credentials as NPs in the United States.
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