Dr. Amy Koehn received her doctorate in nursing from Indiana University in 2014 and joined the UTHSC nursing faculty in 2015 as the concentration coordinator for the NNP program.
Dr. Koehn has a long history of clinical practice in level III and IV NICUs in roles both at the bedside and as a team member for neonatal air and ground transports. She received her MSN from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in 2001 and her BSN from Bethel College in North Newton, KS in 1993.
Dr. Koehn currently heads both the didactic and clinical portions of the NNP program; her teaching philosophy centers on achieving a solid pathophysiological understanding of neonatal disease processes and offering students a variety of clinical experiences to fully actualize the NNP role. Although currently practicing at Level IV NICU at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital,
Dr. Koehn works closely with NICUs throughout the city and their nursing leadership to engage and yield mutually beneficial relationships for both students and healthcare partners. Dr. Koehn’s dissertation study was a grounded theory study in which she interviewed adult ICU nurses regarding their experiences with errors and error reporting. The study resulted in the development of a theoretical model which outlined a shared, time-orientated sequence of events the nurses encountered before, during, and after an error. The model has noted similarities to Tanner’s Clinical Judgement Model, and Dr. Koehn hopes to explore this relationship in future studies. Her other research interests focus on neonatal gut development and the prevention of necrotizing enterocolitis.