Eastern Virginia Ear, Nose & Throat Specialists
Author, A Quick Reference for Otolaryngology: Guide for APRNs, PAs, and Other Health Care Practitioners
When Kim Scott joined Eastern Virginia Ear, Nose & Throat Specialists eight years ago, the practice had never before had a nurse practitioner on staff. A Board certified Asthma Educator and Otorhinolaryngology Nurse, Scott came to Eastern Virginia ENT with a Bachelor of Nursing Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master’s Degree as a Family Nurse Practitioner from the Medical University of South Carolina – and many years of experience as a Registered Nurse, working in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Units of Beaufort General Hospital in South Carolina and Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. She had developed a strong affinity for otolaryngology while working with an allergy and asthma specialist in Fresno, Dr. Malik Baz, a partner of Dr. Winston Vaughan, the founder of the Stanford University Sinus Center, and later the California Sinus Centers.
“It was an adjustment,” Scott says of the move to Virginia. “In California, I’d worked in a large, multiple-city practice with many midlevel providers, all of whom had a great deal of autonomy and independence. I wanted to establish that as the best working paradigm when I joined my new practice, then a four-physician group that had no experience with a Nurse Practitioner. I was incredibly fortunate,” she emphasizes, “as the physicians at Eastern Virginia ENT were very forward thinking and willing to trust my judgment and abilities.”
She knew she had a high bar to set, feeling as if she didn’t do well, it could spell the end of midlevel providers for the group. She worked hard to establish the initiative, and the physicians quickly recognized the value she added to the practice, and to its patients. The practice has grown, today consisting of the original four physicians, herself, a Physician Assistant, and two other doctors.
Scott’s service to the field of medicine has gone far beyond her contributions to the physicians and patients of Eastern Virginia Ear, Nose & Throat. She is recognized as an otolaryngology expert on the Board panel for the National American Nurses Credentialing Center. And it doesn’t end there. She explains:
“When I first joined the ENT community and was researching protocols in otolaryngology and allergy for Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants, there was no book, no publication for a midlevel that would guide us, not even in prioritizing the specifics of taking a history and physical exam,” she says. “Otolaryngology is a separate and distinct specialty from allergy, because there are so many procedural-based diagnoses in otolaryngology.”
Dr. Keyes was first to encourage her to prepare her own protocol book, a task she took on with focused enthusiasm. As she developed the protocols, it became clear to the physicians that such a compilation of methodology for midlevel providers would have value well beyond their practice. Adding contributions from Dr. Richard Debo, Dr. Keyes and Dr. David Leonard, Scott contracted with Springer Publishing Company, a leading source of health care books, textbooks and medical journals for medical professionals, professors and universities. Within a year, A Quick Reference for Otolaryngology: Guide for APRNs, PAs, and Other Health Care Practitioners, was published. The book is available from Springer, as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
“It’s not Harry Potter,” Scott laughs. Perhaps not, but to the patients she treats, the physicians she assists, and the medical professionals her book continues to guide and inspire, it can seem a great deal like magic.
