USER

My clinical experience encompasses forty years as a family nurse practitioner and thirty years as a psychiatric nurse practitioner. My background includes significant leadership and program development accomplishments, including Director of Psychiatry for a national geropsychiatric program based in San Diego. As the Behavioral Health Director and Medical Director of two FQHC/community health centers, I created interdisciplinary teams of physicians, nurses, social workers, therapists, and local community peer personnel that provided both behavioral and physical/medical health care services. As a consultant to the Alaska Native Health Board and trainer/director of clinic services for Alaska-native run health organizations, I developed culturally competent programs to meet community needs. I also provided mental health services to SE Asian refugees and emergency services in Latino communities. 

Working with the leadership of San Diego County’s Behavioral Health Division and its contracted agencies, I have developed opportunities to support our unique local public mental health service sector functions and needs, as well as meeting the curriculum and clinical rotation requirements of the PMHNP Program. A key focus of this academic-community partnership is to further develop physical and mental health integration and interprofessional team collaborative practices.

In my faculty practice at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), I worked extensively with the homeless in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.  With my students in this faculty-run health care clinic, we provided both primary care and psychiatric care services in partnership with the Glide Memorial Methodist Church, an organization offering shelter, meals, job assistance, meals, and other social services to the area’s homeless population.

My nursing leadership has been further demonstrated by my role as Clinical Director of the Alaska Federal Health Care Access Network (AFHCAN), among many other leadership experiences. This internationally-recognized, award-winning organization was founded to provide unmet health care services to active duty service members, veterans, and Alaska Natives and funded directly by Congress through the VA, US Air Force, US Army, Coast Guard, and the Alaska Native Health Consortium. After serving as a key consultant in co-designing and establishing this unique operation, I was retained as its first Clinical Director and worked daily with leadership in the aforementioned organizations.

Teaching, curriculum, and educational leadership experience have been the hallmark of my academic experience. I served as lead clinical faculty for the Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program (PMHNP) at UCSF and subsequently was asked by the Hahn School of Nursing to establish the San Diego area’s first PMHNP program. I currently serve as director of that program. In this position, I oversee all student clinical rotations, interact daily with both community and military health care providers, and teach the core classes to master’s level and doctoral students