UAMS Psychiatric Nurse Serves Patients and Her Country
| Just about any nurse will tell you that service to patients and their families is a very big part of what they do.
Codi Anthony
But Codi Anthony, M.N.Sc., APRN, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, has a commitment that goes beyond her work, school and children in the STRIVE program. She will finish a 10-year journey with the UAMS College of Nursing when she graduates with her doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degree this spring. She has joined the U.S. Army Reserve as well.
“I was in ROTC right out of high school. Military service was always something that I wanted to do,” said Anthony, whose siblings and parents are all veterans, along with a grandfather who served in Vietnam.
Anthony is filling what’s called a “wartime critical shortage area of concentration,” one of only 27 positions nationally in the Army Reserve for psychiatric nurse practitioners. She’s joined a combat operational stress control unit, which provides mental health services for soldiers and their families both pre- and post-deployment.
“I’m excited to be doing this!” Anthony said. “Medically, I think psych is an underserved population, and soldiers are especially underserved within that population. Those are the people I want to treat and those are the people I want to advocate for.”
On March 4th she was direct commissioned as a captain. Following a direct commission course, which takes a month, and another 45 days of what’s essentially condensed basic training in a Basic Officer Leadership Course, she will honor her three-year commitment to serve one weekend a month and two weeks a year, much like the National Guard. Following that, she has another five years to serve in the inactive ready reserve.
“My plan is to do Army Reserve for my three-year contract and then evaluate. If I love it, maybe I will sign up for active duty,” she said. “This may be the population I work with full-time.”
It’s been a dream long coming, and somewhat deferred. Anthony was in college studying health sciences, unsure what her career might be, when she became pregnant. That news not only helped clarify her career plans for nursing, it pre-empted any thought of joining the military while caring for a young child.
Twelve years later, Anthony has not only completed her bachelor’s degree in nursing at UAMS, she went on to obtain her master’s, specializing in psychiatric care. It was her experience as an undergraduate that steered her choices, she said.
“I could have done anything out of school, because as part of the bachelor’s program they gave us exposure to everything: geriatrics, pediatrics, psych, acute care, women’s health. I didn’t know what I was going to do until the first day I got to sit in on the treatment team during my psychiatric rotation,” she said.
“Everyone was giving their input, the psychiatrist, dietician, therapist, caseworkers the nurse, and the nurse practitioner. My first day with a treatment team, I knew this was what I wanted to do” she said. She started looking into the requirements for the Psychiatric Master of Nursing Science program at UAMS the next day and applied as soon as she was eligible.
Anthony being sworn into military service by her mother, a veteran.
Her nursing career started as a patient care technician and then an RN at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. She then began her psychiatric RN work with adults at St. Vincent’s and across the lifespan at UAMS. She began her psychiatric APRN career at the Garland County Detention Center working with adults and then with adolescents at Centers for Youth and Families, a residential facility. Experience in these positions led to her current psychiatric APRN roles, rotating on call for the Pulaski County crisis stabilization unit and her full-time work doing diagnostic assessment and medication management in the Psychiatric Research Institute’s school-based STRIVE program.
Anthony said she appreciates the collaborative environment she works in – the same environment that convinced her psych would be her career focus. She plans to continue to serve her patients and their families at STRIVE as she takes on new responsibilities serving her country as well.
“I’m really excited about being a part of something that is taking preventive measures as well as interventions for this population,” she said. “My best friend just graduated as a nurse practitioner from UAMS. Her husband is in Qatar right now on a six-month deployment. She has two little kids at home. So, remember, it’s not just the soldiers we serve, it’s their kids and spouses, too. I’m excited to be a part of that.”