Adult Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program
Our graduates obtain positions in a variety of acute care settings. A few of our alumni have agreed to offer a description of the types of positions they hold as well as some information about the patients for which they care.
Martin Camacho MSN, ACNP-BC is an Acute Care NP in the Dept of Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. As a clinician Martin manages a wide array of acute and critical illnesses, injuries, traumas as well urgent care needs. Martin specializes in providing advanced nursing care to adults with acute, critical and chronic conditions which require complex and continuous monitoring, intricate and invasive therapies and interpretation of diagnostic testing. He also provides extensive preventive health services, patient education, disease management, and illness prevention.
Martin's clinical interests involve a multitude of areas geared towards augmenting and improving the service of emergency medicine and its delivery, including the education and development of advanced practice nursing, patient management and flow, disaster preparedness and recovery, biodefense and bioterrorism, radiation and chemical emergencies and mass casualty situations. He is also involved in multiple research trials and publications exploring emerging trends and advancements in emergency medicine.
Academically, Martin is a clinical preceptor for the Acute Care, Primary Care and Family NP programs at the University of Pennsylvania's and Thomas Jefferson University's Schools of Nursing with a primary focus on emergency medicine. He is a former faculty member for the ACNP program and remains engaged as part-time faculty with several undergraduate and graduate courses. He is also a reviewer of medical and scientific journals through various publications within the spectrum of advanced practice nursing, critical care and emergency medicine. Martin was the recipient of the Penn Alumni Association Recent Alumni Award for Clinical Excellence 2007 and is a member of Sigma Theta Tau National Nursing Honor Society. Martin graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, NC and was a former US Navy Corpsman with the Fleet Marine Force, Camp Lejeune, NC.
Megan Carr-Lettieri started her nursing career as a nursing assistant and then as a RN in the cardiac medical-surgical unit at Pennsylvania Hospital. After a year, she transitioned to Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in the Medical ICU. Quickly, she realized her love of critical care and wanted to expand her education to meet the future needs of this population. PENN's ACNP program best met those needs for her and she completed her degree while working full-time in the MICU. Her first position was in the Lung Transplant Program at PENN. After spending three fortunate years there with great nursing and physician mentorship, she was able to realize her goal of creating the first NP position in the MICU. In 2007, she received the Excellent Nurse Practitioner Award from AACN for innovation in the role of an advanced practice nurse, particularly regarding End-of Life care. Seven years later, the MICU now has 5 clinicians in the role. While there are technical aspects of the role that are exciting to have mastered, what is most rewarding to her is that the role encompasses serving as a advocate to both critically ill patients and their families as well as to those providers who serve them at the bedside.
Jane Cooper is an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner for a vascular surgery service primarily responsible for inpatient management of the patients on their service. She collaborates with attending physicians, residents and interns. She is often consulted on patients from other services and summoned to the ambulatory surgery clinic to perform a history and physical examination on a patient scheduled for surgery. Because she works in a teaching hospital, often Jane is the team member that knows what is going on with the patients while other team members rotate on and off service. Jane finds her job rewarding and believes that her patients greatly benefit from her being part of the team.
Cathy Cristofalo,MSN, APN is a Vascular Surgery Nurse Practitioner as well as the Director of Surgical 
Nurse Practitioners at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, NJ. She completed the Adult Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing, receiving her MSN, in 2000 and is Board Certified as an ACNP. She is a professional member of the Society for Vascular Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau, AACN, American College of Nurse Practitioners and the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.
Cathy’s current position includes both inpatient and outpatient management of vascular surgery patients. In her role as the Director of the Surgical Nurse Practitioner program, she follows the outcomes, productivity and quality measures of the NPs with which she works. She chairs the APN Council at Cooper University Hospital.
Elizabeth Frederick is a graduate of both the BSN (2004) and MSN (2006, Adult Acute Care Program) at the University of Pennsylvania. She currently works as an outpatient nurse practitioner for a large vascular surgery practice at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She performs initial history and physicals and evaluates patient pre and post-operatively. The patients have a variety of vascular diseases including carotid disease, peripheral arterial disease, thoracic and abdominal aneurysmal disease, vascular trauma, complex wounds, thoracic outlet, dialysis access, renal artery stenosis and mesenteric ischemia. She is responsible for assessing patients in the preoperative period and risk stratifing patients prior to surgery. Prior to her position with vascular surgery, she worked as a hospitalist nurse practitioner. There she served as the lead nurse practitioner for the hospitalist NP group. She helped to develop staffing models, recruit, orient NPs and ultimately the service consisted of 6 full-time nurse practitioners. She was an active member in the unit based leadership committee working with an interprofessional team (physician, nurse manager, and NP) to evaluate floor specific CEQI data and develop protocols to reduce nosocomial infections and readmissions and to improve patient satisfaction. She also worked as the Nurse Practitioner representative for a nationally funded research project working to reduce hospital readmission rates for older hospitalized patients (Society of Hospital Medicine Project BOOST). At the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners National Meeting in Nashville June 2009 she presented her research entitled; An NP-Attending Care Model in an Academic Medical Center: A Comparison of NP and Physician Resident Practice. She received an award for outstanding research presentation.
Jared Johnson is a recent graduate of the ACNP program at Penn. He currently works as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner in an open-model Surgical Intensive Care Unit. His professional responsibilities encompass total care of SICU patients, including admission and transfer of patients, ventilator management, and management of medical diseases in surgical patients, including COPD, DM, ALI/ARDS, SIRS/sepsis, etc. In addition to medical management, he is credentialed and privileged to independently place central lines, arterial lines, chest tubes, dialysis catheters, PICC lines, and to perform therapeutic paracentesis. He works in a unique and wonderful environment where attending physicians foster professional growth and development on daily rounds and leave minute-to-minute management of patients and decisions to the NP’s, remaining available for consultation as needed. He provides bedside and formal education to staff and encourages growth in individual nurses and advancement of nursing in the unit as a whole. Surgeons from all specialties and SICU attendings have vocalized their appreciation for the continuity of care, the thoroughness, and the knowledge that the NP’s contribute to the medical and nursing care of these critically-ill patients.
Joan Hoch Kinniry, CRNP, ACNP-BC is the Lead Acute Care Nurse Practitioner with the Medical Intensive Care Service (MICU) and Procedure/Rapid Response Service (PARS) at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Joan’s current position includes a focus on the daily clinical management of the medical critical care (MICU) patient population, and consultations as coordinator of the PARS team. Joan has a clinical interest in the provision of end of life care in the MICU. She also has a special interest in the area of patient safety in particular related to routinely performed invasive bedside procedures. Joan’s administrative responsibilities include the MICU/PARS performance improvement program, development and monitoring of MICU/PARS Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Initiatives and MICU Clinical Practice Guidelines. Joan has been an instructor in the Clinical Simulation Center for the American College of Physicians at their Annual Conference since 2007. In addition, she is a clinical preceptor for several area acute care nurse practitioner programs.
Christel Beth Morelli, MSN, CCRN,CRNP recently joined Penn Nursing as a lecture B (clinical faculty) in the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program. She graduated from York College of PA with a BSN, and from University of Pennsylvania with a MSN. Practicing as a NP for over 16 years, Beth enjoys helping students in their clinical rotations. When she is not at Penn, Beth works in a busy Cardiology practice outside of Philadelphia. In this role, she is involved with all aspects of cardiology including inpatient rounding on interventional cardiology as well as post op CABG patients. She also is involved in outpatient office hours and stress testing. Beth has had the privilege of working for most of the inner city hospitals including Penn Presbyterian, Hahnemann University and Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals. Because of these experiences she has worked with many Cardiologists and Nurse Practitioners. Beth is available at cbstaud@hotmail.com.
Publications: Chapter Author Logan, Paul (1999). Principles of Practice for the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner: Chapter 32 Coronary Disease; Chapter 33 Valvular and Congenital Heart Disease
Kristin Rupich, MSN, CRNP is currently an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner for the inpatient neurosurgery service at Pennsylvania Hospital. Her patient population includes patients in the intensive care unit and floor with intracranial hemorrhages, brain tumors and spinal cord injuries both before and after surgery. Prior to that role, she was as a nurse practitioner with the NP-Hospitalist service at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. In that role she cared for general medicine patients on a telemetry floor. Along with the other nurse practitioners on the NP service, Kristin created and presented a poster entitled An NP-Attending Care Model in an Academic Medical Center: A Comparison of NP and Physician Resident Practice at the 2008 AANP conference. Kristin completed the Adult Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in 2007. She is a member of Sigma Theta Tau and the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.
Corinna P. Sicoutris, MSN, CRNP FCCM is the Lead Acute Care Nurse Practitioner for the Surgical Critical Care Service and the Clinical Network Administrator for the Division of Traumatology & Surgical Critical Care at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a Clinical Instructor for the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP) Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Corinna completed the Adult Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Pennsylvania, in 2000 and is Board Certified as an ACNP. She was recently inducted as a Fellow in the American College of Critical Care Medicine and is a member of SCCM, AACN, STN, and Sigma Theta Tau. Corinna’s current position includes a focus on the daily clinical management of the surgical critical care (SCC) patient population, as well as administrative responsibilities including the development and monitoring of Clinical Practice Guidelines, management of the SCC database, and oversight of clinical programs and Network Affiliated Hospitals. Her clinical interest is in the management of trauma patients in the resuscitative and critical care phases of care.