Joni Zauhar, MSN, ARNP, CPNP-AC/PC, FNP

Clinical Biography

Joni Zauhar, MSN, ARNP, CPNP-AC/PC, FNP, is a licensed acute care pediatric nurse practitioner in the Texas Center for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease, a clinical partnership between Dell Children’s Medical Center and UT Health Austin. With over 40 years of experience, she specializes in caring for infants, children, and adolescents with heart diseases and defects.

Joni Zauhar earned her bachelor’s in nursing from the University of Iowa and her dual master’s degrees in nursing from the University of South Florida. She also attended a 26-month hospital-based diploma nursing program with a registered nurse track at Moline Public and Lutheran Hospitals, now known as Trinity College of Nursing & Health Sciences, and earned a post-master’s certificate as a pediatric nurse practitioner in acute care from Rush University Medical College.

Joni Zauhar’s past experience includes working as a registered nurse in emergency rooms, cardiovascular intensive care units (CVICUs), burn units, and cystic fibrosis centers, where she served as Nurse Coordinator for children surviving and transitioning into adulthood when lung transplants were considered experimental. Throughout her work history, she has experienced the development of growth of pediatric specialties, to include pulmonology. She has both witnessed and been a part of significant innovations in pediatric anesthesia and critical care that have contributed to outstanding medical and surgical outcomes and offered children a better quality of life. She has also worked in the public health sector, where she provided a model for well-child care for the state of Florida’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). She has been involved in several research projects as all her work affiliations have been associated with academics, and she was published in research on inspiratory muscle training benefits on ventilation weaning. Her clinical interests include the ventricular assist device (VAD) bridge to transplantation and anticoagulation management. She helped facilitate the first pediatric patient to receive a SynCardia Freedom Portable Driver in the country into the home environment as the patient awaited the subsequent (successful) heart transplant.

Joni Zauhar is an acute care pediatric nurse practitioner with UT Health Austin.