Amy Salanty, MSN, RN, Brings Decades of Intensive Care Experience to Psychiatric Nursing

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. Amy Salanty has spent most of her working life in rooms where every minute counts. Trauma bays, surgical intensive care units and night shifts in busy Florida hospitals shaped the way she thinks about patients. Today she is putting that experience to work in a different setting, outpatient psychiatry, where the pace is slower but the stakes for patients and families are just as real.

Since January 2025, Ms. Salanty has been building her psychiatric practice at Blue Umbrella Psychiatry in Davie, Florida, working under the supervision of Dr. Eric Robbins. Ms. Salanty is board certified as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. She began at the clinic as a student during her final clinical rotation and stayed on after finishing her graduate program in September 2025. Several days a week she sees patients, manages complicated medication plans, helps keep the clinic running smoothly and steps in when a colleague has a difficult case. Much of her time also goes to families who are trying to understand a loved one's illness and find their way through the mental health system.

Her road to psychiatry started in critical care. From 2005 to 2009 she worked as a surgical intensive care nurse at Parrish Medical Center, then spent a year on a medical surgical unit at Florida Hospital Memorial Center. In 2010 she joined Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, the Level II trauma center serving Brevard County, where she cared for patients with severe injuries for six years.

In 2016 she moved to Wuesthoff Medical Center in Melbourne and took on a leadership role as night shift assistant manager of a 12 bed medical intensive care unit. She built schedules, kept staff current on continuing education and helped run department meetings. She also answered emergency codes and met trauma patients as they came through the emergency room, stabilizing them and arranging transfers when they needed a larger center.

One case from that period stays with her. Over six straight days she cared for a critically ill patient and, at one point, called a code and brought the patient back. When she talks about it now, though, the resuscitation is not what she remembers most. She remembers the family, and the work she did to make a frightening place feel a little more manageable for them. She still keeps in touch with them today.

Between 2017 and 2019 she worked in long term care at Courtenay Springs Village in Merritt Island, helping patients recover after surgery. She then returned to the intensive care unit at AdventHealth Daytona from 2019 to 2024, where she sharpened her skills in neurology and high acuity nursing.

It was that neurology work that pulled her toward mental health. Seeing how closely brain, body and behavior are connected led her to Wilkes University in Pennsylvania, where she earned a master's degree in psychiatric mental health nursing in 2025. She also holds a Bachelor of Science from Georgia Southern University.

Ms. Salanty belongs to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, the American Nurses Association and the Florida Nurses Association. Outside the clinic she volunteers with the American Red Cross in both Disaster Health Services and Disaster Mental Health Services.

Her next goals are already set. She plans to go back to school for an adult gerontology nurse practitioner degree so she can treat the medical and psychiatric needs of older adults together. In time she hopes to open her own practice and hold licenses in several states.

At home in Hollywood, she and her husband Dave, a Navy veteran of 21 years, share a blended family of four children. They like to walk to local band shows in their neighborhood. She also knits, reads, travels and, by her own account, dances around the house whenever she can.

Dynamo Times recognizes Amy Salanty for a nursing career built on skill under pressure and a steady commitment to the people behind every chart.