family nurse practitioner without medical experience

[nelafred]

Hi nurses,

I am currently BSN holder I want to be a family nurse practitioner but my problem is that I have being working in psych units, I tried severally to get into medical but It has not been easy for me, so my question is that is it possible for someone to do family nurse practitioner without medical experience, can I be able to cope? Thanks all, I really need a help on this.

[pro-student]

You can absolutely do an FNP with only psych experience. Many students graduate FNP programs every year with zero RN experience at all and go on to become successful providers. You psych background will likely be a huge asset since mental health is a significant part of primary care. I'm also assuming that your psych patients aren't universally physically healthy. When I worked in psych, I also cared for patients will HTN, diabetes, pregnancy, cancer, and every other major chronic illness. They weren't on my unit for these problems but we still had to care for the whole person. In many ways this more closely reflects the type of patients you would see in the primary care setting. Don't sell yourself short, you likely have more experience with medical issues than you're giving yourself credit for.