I was promoted to Assistant Professor of Urology in 2019, the first Nurse Practitioner (NP) to achieve this academic position in any department at University of Michigan Health. My research interests include investigating the role of the NP in urology, and improving care of men with benign urology disease.

I am a certified Adult Nurse Practitioner and one of approximately 200 NPs in the US with a specialty certification in urology (CUNP). I have an outpatient clincal practice that focuses on male andrology concerns, forging a unique role as the result of my PhD work, managing men with chronic pelvic and genital pain. I coordinate multidisciplinary referrals for men with chronic pelvic and genital pain issues, and have worked to build relationships across the institution to help care for this urology subpopulation.
I was inducted as a FAANP in 2014 for my work on the specialty role of the urology NP and promotion of men’s health education. I am an active clinician, researcher, editor, and healthcare educator, with numerous publications and presentations locally and internationally, many focused on the NP role. I have worked with the American Urologic Association developing White Papers reviewing the current regulatory environment and guiding integration of NPs into urology practices.

Although many of my research projects as PI have been unfunded, I have worked to introduce residents to clinical research with a translational focus in benign male urology, designed to increase knowledge or document effective practice patterns in this understudied domain of urology and men’s health. I have also developed research that qualified psychosocial characteristics of men seeking fertility care. My recent projects have also sought to describe the role of the Nurse Practitioner in urology subspeciality practice, in order to best promote roles that permit full practice at the top of education, training and licensure when caring for urology patients.
I am currently involved in a Delphi project seeking to describe the role of the urology NP in Australia and New Zealand, salary studies looking at compensation models for the RN and NP in urology environments, and was Chair of a white paper taskforce for the Society of Urologic Nurses and Associates (SUNA) seeking to establish best practice recommendations regarding suprapubic catheter care. A primary research focus for me has been in the arena of male chronic genital and pelvic pain, an area of health disparity when compared with what is known about parallel conditions in women. if