(335) Leadership and Education for Advanced Practice Providers in CF (LEAPP CF): The Post Graduate Fellowship Pilot Program

Background: Many CF Centers have experienced challenges in maintaining the provider workforce due to the shortage of pediatric and adult pulmonologists trained in CF care, and an increasing number of persons with CF (PWCF) because of newborn screening (NBS) and a growing adult CF population. Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) (Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Physician Assistants (PAs)) have been providing high quality CF care and leadership for decades and have the potential to fill this gap. APPs are well prepared to provide the specialized, comprehensive care within multidisciplinary teams for PWCF. In 2018, the CF Foundation (CFF) convened a task force to evaluate the workforce and make recommendations to address barriers to the full integration of APPs in CF care. One recommendation was to provide postgraduate training for APPs new to CF to achieve competency in clinical care of persons with CF. We describe the LEAPP CF pilot, a two-year postgraduate training program that combines a virtual CF curriculum with mentored clinical practice.

Methods: A Request for Applications was released in October 2020 for graduate APPs with 2-36 months of experience in CF care. Applicants identified a clinical mentor in their home CF Center. This experienced CF provider committed to support the development of the fellow’s clinical competency. Fellowship grant review and selection of fellows was completed in February 2021. The Fellowship supports 0.3FTE of APP time for 2 years. The LEAPP CF program kicked off in June 2021. Each fellow was also assigned an APP mentor, who supports professional growth. A series of competencies were developed for LEAPP that inform course objectives. The fellowship curriculum is divided into 4 courses; 1) Foundations of CF Care, 2) CF Care Across the Lifespan, 3) Advanced Topics in CF, and 4) Quality and Leadership. In partnership with the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, the fellowship curriculum is hosted on the CANVAS platform using adult learning principles and best practices for course design and evaluation. LEAPP employs a “flipped classroom” educational model. Each course is divided into a series of 2-week modules during which the topic content is completed independently online or “asynchronously”. At the end of the 2-week module, fellows attend a virtual or “Synchronous Session” and present cases for discussion with content experts from the CF Care Network. At the end of the module, the fellows complete a knowledge assessment and evaluation.

Results: Thirteen APP fellows were selected from 23 applicants. The first course is complete and the second course is underway. The course evaluation is a 1-4 scale with 1 indicating “strongly disagree” and 4 indicating strongly agree. Table 1 summarizes the evaluations for the first course.

Conclusions: LEAPP CF has the potential to boost the CF provider workforce and ensure excellent care for PWCF. The pilot has been well received by the participants with excellent reviews thus far. In addition, LEAPP provides fellows with the opportunity to grow professionally through leadership and quality activities, mentoring, and networking that have potential to improve career satisfaction and retention, an important long-term aim of the program.

Acknowledgements: We would like to acknowledge Stacy Bichl, Jana Yeley, Abraham Sender, Jill Fliege, Jennifer Hamilton, Monica Ulles, and Anna Saulitis for their assistance in the design and implementation of LEAPP CF.
This work was supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

References: