Michael Edward Zychowicz

Dr. Michael E. Zychowicz is a Clinical Professor of Nursing at Duke University School of Nursing (DUSON).  Since 2009, when he joined the DUSON faculty, he has held several leadership positions within the school.  Dr. Zychowicz was the Co-Director and academic partner for the Duke-Durham VA post-graduate primary care NP residency (2013-2024).  He also leads the graduate-level Veterans' Health Specialty and the Orthopedic NP Specialty Program, which was developed with generous extramural funding through HRSA.

Prior leadership positions at the school include Lead Faculty for the Adult Primary Care NP Program (2009 – 2011) and MSN Program Director (2011-2019).  As MSN Program Director he led the program through significant growth and transformation while providing administrative oversight for eleven majors and six clinical specialty certificate programs. Under his leadership, the MSN program converted all majors to a distance-based educational format.    

Prior to joining the faculty at Duke, Dr. Zychowicz was faculty at Mount St. Mary College Nursing Program in Newburgh, NY from 1999 to 2009.  The focus of Dr. Zychowicz’s clinical practice as a Nurse Practitioner has been general orthopedics focusing primarily on surgical and non-surgical spine conditions.  He is nationally certified as both an Adult Nurse Practitioner (ANP) and an Orthopedic Nurse Practitioner (ONP).  He has also practiced as a registered nurse in a variety of ER and ICU settings. Dr. Zychowicz served as an Army Reserve Officer in the Army Nurse Corps between 1991 and 2005. 

Dr. Zychowicz graduated from Orange Community College with an Associate Degree in Nursing in 1990 and from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh with a BSN in 1995. He then earned a Master of Science in Nursing as a Nurse Practitioner from Syracuse University in 1997. While at Syracuse, he taught undergraduate anatomy and physiology and performed a primary care-rural health internship in Aiken, South Carolina, with the National Health Service Corps. Dr. Zychowicz completed the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree in 2006 at Case Western Reserve University. His Doctoral research focused on occupational back injuries and the impact of health beliefs and self-efficacy on time to return to work following an acute injury.

He participated in the AACN Leadership for Academic Nursing Program Fellowship (2007-2008) and the AACN—Wharton Executive Leadership Program Fellowship (2016-2017).

Dr. Zychowicz’s scholarly interests include the advancement of orthopedic practice and education, as well as postgraduate training programs for NPs. He has a clinical interest in occupational back injuries and the impact of health beliefs on return-to-work time. Dr. Zychowicz has been developing and exploring the use of virtual reality to teach distance-based students' psychomotor skills, allowing them to practice skills while away from a traditional nursing lab.   

Dr. Zychowicz is editor for the books Orthopedic Nursing Secrets and Introduction to Orthopedic Nursing. He has published several journal articles and book chapters on a wide variety of orthopedic topics. He is frequently invited to lecture at national and international conferences where he shares his passion for orthopedic practice and topics.  Dr. Zychowicz has served for several years as an item writer for the Orthopedic Nurses Certification Board.

Dr. Zychowicz was selected as the 2004 NY State NP of the Year and received the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) Award for Excellence in 2007.  He was selected as a Fellow of the AANP (2007) and was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (2013).  In 2017, he was selected by the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University as the 2016 Outstanding Alumni of the Year.  Dr. Zychowicz was also selected for the Outstanding Orthopedic Nurse Award by the National Association of Orthopedic Nurses (NAON) in 2017 and inducted as an inaugural fellow of NAON in 2023.