Maria C Kidner DNP, FNP-BC, APRN, FAANP
Maria Kidner has gone through the ranks for nursing education over twenty years from aide to doctorate, earning her DNP in 2008. As a NP she has had a variety of experiences including: the development of a rural Wyoming Emergency Room critical care access facility, multiple medical missions in Guyana, South America (including implementing the first Critical care nursing course, and the first Mass causality trauma training for the airport and hospital), ten years in cardiology, and teaching in Vietnam. In 2015 she went to Rwanda, Africa to spend a year in the Human Resources for Healthcare & Duke University to help teach nurses and physicians in Kibungo, Rwanda. There Dr. Kidner designed and implemented a leadership program and History & Physical courses that is still being taught today. She inspired and taught two Rwanda nurses cardiology and they successfully opened the first nurse-run Heart failure and Hypertensive clinic that currently sees 375 patients per month. The leadership training has been developed and refined for five years to become LEAP Leadership with focus on personal and organizational strategic planning through Leadership, Engagement, Accountability, and Professionalism/Professional Identity. Dr. Kidner has started LEAP leadership LLC to bring education on leadership, role transition and professional identity to nurses. She presents locally, nationally and internationally on a variety of topics from emergency medication, cardiology, international work, leadership, and inspiration. Upon return to the United States in 2016, Dr. Kidner join a NP clinic in Wyoming to provide primary care until the clinic closed where she took up locums work in cardiology until the last clinic closed during Covid. Dr. Kidner has been the Wyoming AANP State Representative 2008-2014 and 2016-2020 when she became the AANP Region 8 Director until 2024.
Dr Kidner remains active on the international front as the Co-chair to the research subgroup for ICN NP/APN, a senior consultant to Team Heart, Inc with a focus on post graduate cardiology education for nurses and Rheumatic Heart Disease. She is a Rotarian and created the Rotary International Global Grant Rwandan Nurses Saving Lives which is the first nursing education project focused on preventing RHD development through the education and skills development of remote nurses providing primary care in rural African settings. Dr. Kidner continues to speak nationally and international on cardiology, leadership topics, APN development and professional identity. In 2022 Springer published her first book in the ICN APN series on developing professional identity through APN role transition.