Melissa Viatori, DNP, FNP-C, attended the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing and graduated with her BSN in 2005. While a student at Pitt, she traveled to Palermo, Sicily for a medical trip to UPMC’s partner hospital ISMETT in 2004 to further her knowledge regarding solid organ transplant and international patient care. Dr. Viatori started her professional career as a registered nurse at Duke University in 2005 working in malignant hematology as a floor nurse. This is where she first started working with patients undergoing clinical trials. She had a continued desire to learn more and enrolled in the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Duke University School of Nursing in 2007. She graduated in 2009 with a Master of Science in Nursing and became a Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner. During her time at Duke School of Nursing, Dr. Viatori traveled to Honduras for a medical trip to provide primary care to residents in a mountain community in the spring of 2009. This experience was a great lesson in planning, improving language skills, appreciating a new culture, and the impact of quality primary care in a small community with limited resources.
In early 2010, Dr. Viatori began working at the Stanford Cancer Center with outpatient urologic oncology patients undergoing treatment for urologic malignancies. She published an article about Testicular Cancer during her time at Stanford. Dr. Viatori became heavily involved with the San Francisco Bay Area Oncology Nursing Society and was a board member from 2013-2015. It was particularly rewarding for her to provide nurses in the San Francisco area with continued education regarding oncology best practices. In 2012, she was called back to the inpatient setting at the University of San Francisco Medical Center and worked with inpatient malignant hematology and bone marrow transplant patients. Dr. Viatori thoroughly enjoyed working with patients who had a long length of stay and performing procedures such as bone marrow biopsies, lumbar punctures, and administering intrathecal chemotherapy.
Dr. Viatori and her family relocated back to North Carolina in late 2015, and she returned to the malignant hematology and cellular therapy department at Duke University Hospital in early 2016. She continued to work with this challenging and rewarding patient population. She again wanted to continue her educational journey and earned her DNP at the University of North Carolina Greensboro in 2021. Her DNP research project focused on veno-occlusive disease in malignant hematology patients and she presented her research poster at the Nursing World Conference and the Association of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Nurse Conference in 2022. Later that year, her family moved to Boone, NC. She started at Appalachian State as an adjunct instructor in 2023 and has worked with students in the clinical setting. Additionally, Dr. Viatori worked in a local Family Practice until May 2025, providing primary care for our community.
Melissa Viatori has worked very closely with patients undergoing clinical trials at Duke University Hospital, UCSF, and the Stanford Cancer Center. She is very enthusiastic about evidence-based care and is very excited to teach App State Nursing Students in the classroom and clinical setting. In addition, she hopes to continue working closely with the surrounding community.
Title: Clinical Instructor
Email address: Email me
Phone: (828) 262-6845
Fax: (828) 262-8066