Elke Zschaebitz, DNP, ARPN, FNP-BC (she/hers) is an Assistant Professor at the Georgetown University School of Nursing on the Educator tract. Her roles as a family nurse practitioner have included civilian service in U.S. military clinics in the US and overseas in Germany with recognitions from the 94th Engineer Combat Battalion, the American Red Cross, and a Military Child Education Coalition award for organizing one of the best national Student2Student mentorship and orientation programs. Before her appointment at Georgetown, she held a full-time position at the University of Virginia (2007-2010) where she was awarded an Innovative Teaching Award for developing a curriculum immersing advanced practice nursing students in Appalachia to learn more about culture, health, and the use of telehealth technologies. Her previous global scholarship also included research, genotyping cervical HPV in Tanzania among the Maasai women, and examining birth control practices.
Dr. Zschaebitz has a lifetime of teaching and scholarship focused on social justice issues affecting the health of marginalized populations. She is a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Global Education Institute and an original member of the Transgender Health Association of Central Virginia (THACVA), which has been instrumental in education and mentorship about the intersectionality of gender-diverse patients. Her interdisciplinary work also includes initiatives with the Virtual Inter-professional Educational Team (VIPE) a multi-university interdisciplinary collaboration team that was recently awarded the Interprofessional Global Award in Doha, Qatar in 2023. She has spoken at several state-wide, national, and international conferences, has been the author of several peer-reviewed nursing publications including a podcast presenter, and has served as an abstract reviewer for various organizations.
Dr. Zschaebitz's current scholarship and service focus on interdisciplinary teams to improve education and practice. She is a principal member of the GUMC Center for Innovation and Leadership in Education in the domain of Education and serves as a committee member of the Racial Justice for Change; GUMC Health Equity Committee and as Bias Reduction and Improvement Coach (BRIC) within the Georgetown community. She has been the primary investigator and member of a GUMC RADIANCE and AANP grant incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion principles using digital storytelling of marginalized people to center the challenges around health systems.
For her role in education, advocacy, and mentorship, Dr. Zschaebitz was awarded the prestigious Virginia Council of Nurse Practitioners 2020 Annual Education Award. She has been a Georgetown University Gender+ Justice Fellow ('22) and is currently a GUMC Teaching Academy (CENTILE) Principal Member in the domain of Direct Teaching. In 2023, she was co-awarded the Georgetown University Provost Innovation in Teaching Award for her involvement in the Virtual InterProfessional Education Initiative, a multi-institutional program that has received several national and international awards. Dr. Zschaebitz was recently awarded the Journal for Nurse Practitioners Marilyn Edmunds Writing Award for 2023 for exemplary scholarship as the primary investigator for the submission: Utilizing storytelling to impact faculty attitudes and beliefs about transgender people (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2023.104823 (new window))