Ms. Valderrama is currently a fourth year PhD student at the Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing in Atlanta, Georgia. Her training is in cardiovascular nursing and she has a special interest in symptoms of patients with cardiac arrhythmias, particularly atrial fibrillation. She is presently recruiting for her dissertation research study which is examining fatigue and multidimensional predictors of fatigue in patients with permanent atrial fibrillation.

Ms. Valderrama has presented abstracts at several local and national conferences, including the Heart Rhythm Society, the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, the Second National CDC Prevention Conference on Heart Disease and Stroke, and the Southern Nursing Research Society. Ms. Valderrama has an article to be published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine about the public health implications of atrial fibrillation. In addition, Ms. Valderrama has been primary author and co-author of several published peer-reviewed journal articles, in journals such as the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, the Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, and Critical Care Nursing Clinics of North America.

Ms. Valderrama began her nursing career at West Virginia University, earning her BSN in 1997. She graduated with her MSN from Emory University in 2001, with a specialization as an adult acute care nurse practitioner. She is currently a doctoral candidate at Emory University.