Jessica Locke, PhD, APRN

Lead nurse practitioner for outpatient care, UF Health Comprehensive Epilepsy Program (a NAEC Level IV Epilepsy Center) and Neurology Sleep Disorders programs. Primary responsibilities include:

• Outpatient visits in our neurology clinic or via telehealth, including physical and cognitive examinations, education, diagnostic testing, pharmacological management, VNS programming, CPAP programming, and referrals for ketogenic diet and psychological therapies, as needed.
• Management of urgent patient care needs via phone and MyChart for the entire Epilepsy/Neuro Sleep team.
• Electronic prescription refills for Epilepsy/Sleep.
• Diagnostic test ordering and follow up, including labs, imaging, outpatient EEG, home EEG, epilepsy monitoring unit, sleep studies, EMG, neuropsychology.
• Coordination of referrals to other specialties and social resources.
• Obtaining prior authorizations and assisting with completion of documents, including disability and driving appeals.
• Sub-investigator for clinical research.
• Mentoring and education of new advanced practice providers, medical and APP students, and neurology residents.
• Patient and caregiver education.
• Protocol, educational material, and EMR template development for Epilepsy and Sleep Disorders.
• Our Epilepsy program population includes a complex variety of generalized epilepsy, focal epilepsies, and patients with mixed or primary nonepileptic seizures.
• Our Neuro Sleep Disorders program population includes sleep apneas, narcolepsy, EDS, insomnia, PLMS, RBD, circadian rhythm disorders, and parasomnias.
• Management and/or coordination of care for comorbidities including headaches, psychiatric disorders, cognitive disorders, brain tumors, tremor, other movement disorders, women's health, neuropathy, and complex syndromes.

In addition to working with our Level IV Epilepsy Program, from 2008-2010 I also saw return outpatients in the UF Health Cognitive Disorders clinic. Primary responsibilities included cognitive examinations, including MMSE and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), referrals to and review of neuropsychological testing and imaging studies, patient and caregiver education, social resource referrals, and pharmacological management.

Acute Neuroscience/Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, primary nursing care and charge nursing.

• Facial nerve axotomy, paraffin embedding, microtome and cryostat tissue sectioning, autoradiography, histochemistry, microscopic quantitative analysis, in situ hybridization, RT-PCR, statistical analysis, technical writing and editing.
• Co-authored scientific papers for publication (as Jessica R. Conde)

Primary nursing care in the home setting for patients with spinal cord injury, brain injury, and dementia.