Jack Hydrick, MSN, will provide family practice or adult general medicine care at the McKendree Clinic.(photos by Dana Johnson)
School of Nursing serving McKendree residents
Hydrick checks Jewell Taylor’s blood pressure at the McKendree Clinic. Taylor, the first patient to visit the clinic, is one of hundreds of residents who will benefit from the VUSN-sponsored clinic.
Vanderbilt School of Nursing’s Faculty Practice Network (VNFPN) is opening the doors on a new nurse-managed, community-based clinic this week.
The new Senior Health Center will be housed at McKendree Village in Hermitage. McKendree Village is a progressive living community for seniors, with independent cottage homes, a tower of apartment-style living quarters, and separate buildings housing residents in need of assisted living, rehabilitation, and nursing home facilities. The center will serve close to 400 potential clients.
McKendree Village has been part of the Vanderbilt family of related institutions for several years. Recently, McKendree’s physician services ended and the Vanderbilt School of Nursing is now moving in to provide health care for the facility’s senior residents.
The McKendree Senior Health Center will offer family practice, mental health and women’s health services.
Joyce Laben, MSN, professor of Nursing Emerita and psych-mental health specialist, will serve as the mental health care provider; Laurie Arnold Tompkins, MSN, will provide women’s health and gynecological services; and Jack Hydrick, MSN, will provide family practice or adult general medicine care.
Hydrick, who treats patients at the nurse-managed Madison Clinic and teaches at the School of Nursing, says he’s looking forward to the new opportunity at McKendree. “I’m really excited about it. It’s a nice facility. They offer a broad scope of services,” he said. Hydrick has worked with elderly patients and says serving their needs at McKendree is a challenge he welcomes. “It’s very rewarding. They’re often complex patients.”
The McKendree Senior Health Center will be open Monday through Friday, on a part-time basis, totaling as much as 28 hours a week for the three health care providers. But Bonnie Pilon, DSN, senior associate dean for Practice Management, says hours will be extended if needed.
Ron Jennette, chief financial officer and director of operations at McKendree Village, says they’re thrilled to welcome Vanderbilt’s nurse practitioners to their community. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for residents especially, to obtain services in a very convenient manner. We’re also happy that it enhances our relationship with Vanderbilt, who we’re affiliated with,” Jennette said.
Pilon hopes to offer health care services to McKendree employees, and eventually to serve others in the community. “We hope to attract employees and employee families,” she said.
Pilon says the new clinic is yet another example of the VNFPN reaching out to the community.
“There’s more demand as you age, and now you have people who live in a dwelling where they may not be able to get out and go whenever they want to, and this is a huge convenience for them,” Pilon said.
She adds that addressing the health concerns of senior women is particularly important. “Senior women often don’t seek GYN or breast care perhaps because of embarrassment or thinking they’re no longer reproductively active so they don’t have to, and we know that can be detrimental to their health. They do face serious risks, particularly from cancer, that can go undetected unless you have the opportunity to see a provider. So we think by providing targeted GYN services we’re making an important preventive health program readily available for these elder women,” she said.
McKendree, like several other nurse-managed clinics operating in the Nashville area, is a full-service advanced practice nursing clinic, part of the larger network of Vanderbilt. The nurse provider is there, accessible to the potential client, can diagnose and treat chronic recurring illness, and because of their advanced training, can refer them appropriately to specialty care at Vanderbilt or elsewhere, Pilon said.
Pilon says the efficiency of the health care system is optimized by the function of McKendree and other nurse-managed clinics.
“They are offering front-line therapy that’s needed, and they’re like a sort-and-sift mechanism for the rest of the system. So people who may not seek care can seek it more easily, so they’ll have earlier entry when things are not good, and then by default, it filters the right patients to the right specialists back to a highly complex environment like Vanderbilt.”