Shannon Fitzgerald
A graduate of the Community Health MSN/FNP track, Fitzgerald counts her time at YSN as the foundation of a fascinating career anchored in continuous clinical practice, ranging from urban pediatric hospitals to small town clinics and rural clinics in the middle of the Nevada desert. She’s currently practicing part time at Bainbridge Pediatrics and still loves primary care now as much as she did in 1980.Hired as the first Chief of Advanced Practice at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Fitzgerald spent 15 years developing teams of nurse practitioners and physician assistants in every department and inpatient area and tripled the APP workforce. With a stellar team of leaders, she started a large post graduate fellowship for APPs that transformed clinical practice and created opportunities for teaching and mentorship. She became a member of Board of Directors for the National Nurse Practitioner Residency and Fellowship Training Consortium when she left her role at Children’s in 2019. She also serves as an accreditation site visitor, and advocates for rigorous standards for post graduate training for NPs and PAs.
Starting with her days at YSN, Fitzgerald has been dedicated toward the removal of unnecessary barriers to practice for NPs. In the 1980s in Nevada, she worked toward prescriptive authority and equitable third-party reimbursement for NPs and continued similar work in Washington state. She served two terms as a member of the Washington State Nursing Care Commission, including 4 years as Commission Chair, and was delighted to participate with nursing advocacy organizations to eliminate the last barrier to full prescriptive authority in Washington state. She continues to advise and consult organizations and individuals to maximize the contributions of advanced practice providers in health care delivery.
Together with her husband, Ken Elam, Fitzgerald founded a small NGO in Zambia that has been providing family planning and gender-based violence recognition and referral services from 2007 until 2022, when they transitioned the clinic to local operational leadership in Ngombe, Lusaka, Zambia. They are active in the Medical Reserve Corps for Bainbridge Island, in addition to traveling and being with their family, that includes four middle school age grandchildren.