From Trauma ICUs to Her Own Practice: Amy Salanty Opens Purple Elephant Psychiatry & Wellness

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. When a hurricane or flood displaces Florida families, the American Red Cross sends more than cots and water. Its volunteers include nurses trained to look after both physical health and mental health in the days after a disaster. Amy Salanty is one of them, volunteering with the organization's Disaster Health Services and Disaster Mental Health Services teams. She also volunteers with Give an Hour.

In July 2026 she opened her own private practice, Purple Elephant Psychiatry & Wellness. The practice is fully virtual and serves clients throughout Florida, so patients in small towns and big cities alike can reach her from home.

The calm she brings to that work was learned at the bedside. Ms. Salanty began nursing in Georgia in 1998 and took travel contracts across Georgia and North Carolina before settling in Florida, working in trauma bays, surgical intensive care units and other high acuity hospital settings up and down the Southeast.

In Florida she worked as a surgical intensive care nurse at Parrish Medical Center from 2005 to 2009. After a year of medical and surgical nursing at Florida Hospital Memorial Center, she joined Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne in 2010, where she spent six years in the neuro surgical trauma intensive care unit of a Level II trauma center.

In 2016 she moved to Wuesthoff Medical Center in Melbourne as a clinical nurse manager in a 12 bed medical intensive care unit, working nights. She built schedules, tracked staff continuing education, helped run department meetings and served as a first responder for codes and for trauma patients arriving in the emergency room. When a patient needed more than a community hospital could offer, she stabilized them and arranged the transfer to a larger trauma center.

From 2017 to 2019 she worked in long term care at Courtenay Springs Village in Merritt Island, guiding patients through recovery and rehabilitation after surgery. She then returned to critical care as a surgical intensive care nurse at AdventHealth Daytona from 2019 to 2024, where she developed particular depth in neurology and intensive care.

Caring for patients with neurological injuries convinced her that mind and body cannot be treated in isolation. She enrolled at Wilkes University in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, and in 2025 earned a master's degree in psychiatric and mental health nursing, with coursework centered on integrated mental health treatment. Her undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Science from Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.

She completed her clinical training at Blue Umbrella Psychiatry in Davie, Florida, starting with an academic rotation in January 2025 and staying on after graduation until March 2026. There she managed complex medication regimens, kept patient flow moving, helped colleagues think through difficult cases and supported families who were new to the mental health system.

Ms. Salanty is a board certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and a member of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, the American Nurses Association and the Florida Nurses Association.

She has clear plans for her practice. She intends to expand it to include psychedelic assisted therapies such as ketamine and Spravato, and she plans further nurse practitioner training in adult and geriatric care so she can address the medical and mental health needs of older adults together. She also hopes to hold nursing licenses in several states.

Dynamo Times recognizes Amy Salanty for a nursing career that moved from the intensity of trauma and intensive care to a practice of her own in mental health, always with the whole patient in view.