AdvancingPractice

🎉🏆 **Celebrating Our 2026 APP Award Winners!** 🏆🎉

We’re proud to recognize our incredible Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) who go above and beyond every day to care for Erie patients, families, and communities. 💙

Please join us in giving a BIG congratulations to this year’s award recipients! 👏

🏆 APP Clinical Devotion Award
✨ Andra Morris, MSN, MPH, CPNP-PC

🏆 APP ExemplErie Leadership Award
✨ Sam Jerusal, MSN, CPNP-PC

🏆 APP Mentor of the Year
✨ Stephanie Mora Hernandez, MSN, MPH, MSN, APRN, AGPC-C

🏆 APP Standout Leader of the Year
✨ Kawana Tharps, DNP, APRN, FNP-C

We had the opportunity to surprise our award winners at their home sites and celebrate their amazing accomplishments with them! 🎊💐

👉 Swipe through to see some of the special moments we captured while surprising and celebrating our APP award winners! 📸✨

Thank you for your leadership, dedication, mentorship, and compassion. Your commitment to our patients, families, colleagues, and communities makes a meaningful difference at Erie every day. 💙

Help us celebrate our amazing APP award winners by showing them some love in the comments! 🎉👏💐

✨ Cohort 7 is officially in Week 2 of Orientation!✨

Our newest AdvancingPractice Fellows are diving deeper into their journey with a week filled with hands-on learning, clinical experiences, and collaboration. 🩺💙

This week, our fellows are shadowing their preceptors and getting an inside look at what it means to provide exceptional care within their clinical settings.

They also had the incredible opportunity to visit the UIC College of Nursing SIM Lab, where they worked with high-fidelity mannequins.

🩺 Why Simulation Matters:
These hands-on experiences help our fellows build clinical confidence, sharpen critical-thinking skills, strengthen clinical decision-making, and foster collaboration —all essential skills for becoming well-rounded APRN providers.

And we’re not done yet! 👀 Our fellows will return for a second simulation experience during Week 3 of orientation, giving them another opportunity to put their knowledge and skills into action.

We’re excited to watch Cohort 7 learn, grow, and step into their future as APRN providers!🌟

🎉 Happy Advanced Practice Provider (APP) Week! 🎉
September 21–25, 2026, we’re celebrating our incredible Advanced Practice Providers and the meaningful impact they make every day! 🩺💙

APP Week is an opportunity to recognize the dedication, expertise, leadership, and compassion our APPs bring to their patients, colleagues, and communities. Your commitment to providing high-quality, patient-centered care and advancing health equity makes a difference every single day.

To celebrate APP Week, we asked everyone across Erie to help us shine a spotlight on our amazing Erie Advanced Practice Providers who go above and beyond every day for their patients, colleagues, and communities. 🌟

Through nominations submitted by Erie staff, we’ll be recognizing APPs who stand out for their dedication to patient care, leadership, mentorship, and commitment to advancing APP practice. 🏆✨

To all of our APPs: THANK YOU for your hard work, your passion, and the exceptional care you provide. We appreciate you today and every day!

👏 Join us in celebrating our APPs and wishing them a very Happy APP Week!

Stay tuned as we spotlight our 2026 APP Award recipients! 🎉🏆

🎓✨ **Congratulations, AdvancingPractice Fellowship Cohort 6!** ✨🎓

On September 4, 2026, we celebrated an incredible milestone as our **AdvancingPractice Fellows – Cohort 6** officially completed their fellowship! 💙

Over the course of their fellowship, these amazing APRNs have grown as clinicians, leaders, educators, and advocates for their patients and communities. We are so proud of all they have accomplished and the dedication they have shown throughout this journey.

As they begin this next chapter, we wish each of our fellows **continued success and all the best in their future endeavors!** 🌟

And we’re especially excited to share that **some of our Cohort 6 fellows will be continuing their journey with Erie — now as Erie providers!** 🩺💙 We couldn’t be more excited to have them continue serving our patients and communities.

Congratulations, Cohort 6! Your fellowship journey may be coming to an end, but we know this is just the beginning of something even greater. **Once an AdvancingPractice Fellow, always part of the Erie family!** 🎉

🌿 **Wellness, connection, and a little time to breathe.** 🧘🏽‍♀️✨

Our **AdvancingPractice Fellowship Program** recently hosted a yoga retreat for our APRN fellows and preceptors! 💚

In healthcare, we spend so much of our time caring for others that it’s important to create space to care for ourselves, too. This retreat gave our fellows and preceptors an opportunity to slow down, recharge, connect, and reflect on the importance of wellness in both our personal and professional lives.

Wellness is an essential part of building sustainable, compassionate healthcare leaders. Through experiences like this, the AdvancingPractice Fellowship Program is committed to supporting our APRN fellows not only in their clinical growth, but also in their overall well-being. 🌱

A **HUGE thank you to our wonderful yoga instructor, Natalee Rodgers from Yoga with the Omies**, for guiding us through such a restorative and meaningful experience! 🧘🏽‍♀️💫 We are so grateful for the positive energy, mindfulness, and space you created for our fellows and preceptors.

Here’s to making wellness a priority—because caring for those who care for others starts with caring for ourselves. 💚

Today, our APRN Fellows (cohort 6) proudly presented their Quality Improvement (QI) projects at our Erie Evanston location! 🎉

As part of the AdvancingPractice APRN Fellowship, each fellow develops and presents a QI project focused on improving patient care and clinical practice. We are incredibly proud of the dedication, collaboration, and evidence-based work they shared today.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who joined us in person to support our fellows—we truly appreciate your time and encouragement!

📸 Photo 1: MMM Presentation
📸 Photo 2: Antimicrobial Stewardship Presentation
📸 Photo 3: Breastfeeding Presentation

Congratulations to our fellows on reaching this important milestone. Your commitment to advancing healthcare and improving outcomes for the communities we serve is inspiring! 💙

✨ In lieu of our regular didactics, our AdvancingPractice Fellows had the privilege of spending the day at the Art Institute of Chicago for a truly unique learning experience.

A huge thank you to Sam Ramos, Director of Gallery Activation, for guiding us through this incredible opportunity. Our fellows spent time with a handful of carefully selected works of art, reflecting on each piece and connecting it to our work in healthcare.

The experience sparked thoughtful conversations about empathy, perspective, observation, and the human experience—reminding us that learning doesn’t only happen in the classroom.
We’re grateful for opportunities like these that encourage our fellows to grow as compassionate healthcare providers, both inside and outside the clinic. 🎨🩺

🏥✨ Our APRN Fellows recently took a field trip to Erie’s newest site, Erie Sankofa!

During their visit, the fellows toured the beautiful new facility and learned about the many incredible services and resources available to Erie patients. It was an inspiring opportunity to see firsthand how Erie continues to expand access to high-quality, community-centered care.

👀 Hint, hint... will some of our incoming Cohort 7 APRN Fellows be placed at Sankofa?

You’ll have to stay tuned! We can’t wait to introduce our newest APRN Fellows, who will begin their fellowship journey in September 2026.

Today, the AdvancingPractice Fellowship Program had the opportunity to participate in a wellness yoga session led by yoga instructor Natalie Rodgers from YogawiththeOmies. 🧘🏽‍♀️✨

Thank you, Natalie, for providing such a meaningful and refreshing experience for our Cohort 6 fellows. At AdvancingPractice, we care deeply about the wellness of our fellows, and part of this fellowship is exploring healthy ways to manage stress, practice self-care, and support overall well-being.

By prioritizing wellness, we continue striving to provide the best possible care for our Erie patients and community. 💙

SelfCare CommunityCare

🧠✨ Psych Simulation Day!
Today, our AdvancingPractice Fellowship Program took learning to the next level with our first-ever psychiatric simulation during didactic session at our Erie Evanston site! We look forward to incorporating psych simulations into future cohorts!

Led by our incredible Clinical Liaison, Esther Sault, and in collaboration with Adult Gerontology Preceptor, Kate Kozeniewski, fellows engaged in an immersive experience designed to strengthen clinical decision-making, communication, and patient-centered care in behavioral health.

This simulation created a safe space for fellows to practice real-world scenarios, build confidence, and deepen their understanding of complex psychiatric presentations—an essential skill set for providing care. 

At AdvancingPractice, we are committed to innovative, experiential learning that prepares our fellows to deliver high-quality, compassionate care in every setting. 💙

AdPrac