The mission of the post-graduate primary care nurse practitioner residency is to bridge education and practice while transitioning novice nurse practitioners into safe, competent professionals to care for our nation's Veterans while using clinical evidence to guide practice.

• Support professional role transition, integration, and socialization of new nurse practitioners.
• Provide interprofessional learning and practice experiences in Veterans with complex health care problems.
• Improve Veteran access to high quality care.
• Expand the VA North Texas workforce by improving the confidence, productivity, and job satisfaction of new nurse practitioners who choose to work in a Veteran-centric setting.

Program Duration

The Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Residency is a 12-month program during which the residents have 100% protected time to master the complexities of caring for Veterans.

Curriculum Model

The curriculum defines, separates, and integrates both classroom and experiential learning opportunities and consists of 80% experiential learning activities and 20% didactic learning activities.

Experiential Learning

The 12-month curricular program was designed using a four-phase model. The model consists of multiple rotations to a wide variety of specialty units and primary care clinics. Clinical rotations will be within the Dallas VANTHCS, inclusive of its surrounding Community Based Out-Patient Clinics (CBOCs).

Didactic Sessions

Residents will attend regular didactic sessions. Didactic sessions consist of a variety of academic/learning activities, didactic classes, simulation, and pre/post-clinical conferences for experiential learning and evaluation.

Interprofessional Collaboration

Nurse practitioner residents will collaborate with medicine, pharmacy, and psychology residents as members of an interdisciplinary team.

Professional Development

Networking, collaborating, meeting new colleagues, and building relationships is key to professional development and career advancement within the program.

Scholarly Project

Evidence-based practice is a central tenet of the program and residents are deeply engaged in quality enhancement and/or system redesign projects during their training at VA North Texas, leading to improved patient and organizational outcomes as well as providing opportunities for scholarly presentations and publications.

• A recent graduate (within 12 months) of master's or doctoral level nurse practitioner program accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN) or The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE).
• No previous experience as an NP required
• Minimum of 3.0 GPA
• U.S. citizen.
• Hold current board certification in the same specialty area as the program’s focus:
  • Primary care NP residents must hold either an adult-gerontological nurse practitioner or family nurse practitioner board certification.
• Current, full, active, and unrestricted registration as a nurse practitioner in a U.S. state, commonwealth, territory or the District of Columbia, prior to the start of the NPR program.

Note: Although admission priority must be given to trainees who possess licensure and board certification at the time of program entry, the OAA Nursing Education Director may grant a “90-day grace period” to highly qualified NP residency candidate(s) whose licensure and board certification have been delayed.

Candidates must provide written assurance that they will obtain licensure and board certification within 90 days from the start of the program. If a nurse practitioner resident fails to meet board certification or licensure requirement within the 90 days since the start of the program, the trainee will be terminated from the program.

• Salary is paid by the VA Office of Academic Affiliations (OAA) and rates may increase depending on the current year allocation rate. 
• Government health care medical plan with optional dental, vision, and life insurance.
• 11 paid holidays.
• PTO & sick leave accrued per pay period.
• No call or weekend shifts required.
• 100% protected learning time.
• Other VA unmatched benefits.