So You’re a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner!(What’s a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner?)
I am often asked about my role as an Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. For me, the role has been a way for me to provide skilled, personalized care, and do so in a way that gets services to my clients more quickly, with maximized flexibility for high-quality experience and results.
Hands-on Care in Crisis Situations
Being a nurse practitioner is different from being a physician in that our training and experience starts with being a registered nurse (RN) first. In my case, that was a year of pre-requisites, as well as two and a half years of school. I worked three years as an inpatient psychiatric RN, which provided me with a unique perspective of meeting patients in psychiatric, but not physiologic, crisis. As a psychiatric nurse I meet patients when they are at risk of harm to themselves or others – or when the psychiatric syndrome they are experiencing has made them completely unable to care for themselves. I have had the extremely rewarding and enlightening experience of giving medications and watching patients for hours and days as they respond and change.
Consult Psychiatry: Physical Illness/Injury AND Psychiatric Need
Additionally, I dedicated two and a half years to completing my psychiatric nurse practitioner (NP) status, which included training in the outpatient at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a year. Following graduation, I worked in outpatient psychiatry and so spent most of my career doing hospital consult psychiatry. Consult psychiatry happens when the patient has been admitted to the hospital in a physiological crisis (illness, injury, other) and also has a psychiatric need.
During this time I worked alongside brilliant psychiatrists at Rush and Northwestern Memorial, seeing psychiatric problems paired with a dizzying array of physical conditions. I feel very fortunate to have had that exposure, and the ready guidance of those physician teams.
An Independent Practice with a Collaborative Approach
Thanks to my experience and training, under Illinois law, I now function as a “Full Practice Authority” NP. I’m also licensed as an out-of-state telehealth provider in Florida. In both statuses, I do not require a collaborative agreement with a physician. However, I still engage heavily in consultation with mental health experts, and engage in high-level continuing education to ensure I am fully trained and updated on treatments and protocols.
How is what I do different from a physician? Physicians receive four years of medical school and an additional four-year residency. There are situations of complexity in which a physician can be a better choice, especially for more rare and difficult-to-treat conditions – or for very acute situations requiring high-level interventions, especially in the hospital. I’m pretty good at saying to a patient “for this, you really need a physician involved.” Collaborating with the best experts when required allows me to provide an ideal treatment scenario for my clients.
More High Quality Mental Health Resources Mean Better Outcomes
I am now in my tenth year as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and I am extremely gratified that being an independent practitioner is an extremely good option for talented people seeking a career in the healing arts. It has been an honor to help train other psychiatric nurse practitioners, and to continue to serve in leadership roles throughout the psychiatric nursing community.
Most of all, serving as a psychiatric nurse practitioner means more people can have faster access to high quality mental health resources – resources that are often sorely needed and in short supply. Personally, there is nothing better than watching patients of all kinds come into the office for medication management and/or therapy, and get better. I love my job, and I am happy to answer any questions readers may have about my chosen career. Please, don’t hesitate to ask – perhaps you or someone you know would be interested in this incredibly satisfying career path.