Advanced Holistic Nursing master's degree--thoughts?

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Hiya folks,

FAU is now offering an Advanced Holistic Nursing master's degree, which I find really cool and interesting since my own philosophy on medical care is more holistic and nutrition/alternative medicine based. I'm about to graduate from my ADN program and will be going on in my education after I get my bachelor's and my 2 areas of interest are in becoming a psych mental health NP and holistic nursing. Does anyone known about the odds of finding work with a holistic NP degree, where one would find work, etc.? Although I would love to get the holistic nursing master's degree, I fear that it wouldn't serve me well in our Western medicine-dominated medical culture. Thoughts from anyone in the field or anyone who has researched this more? Thanks :)

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.

A few thoughts on this...

1. Currently, there are approved APN certification titles that CMS (federal Medicare and state Medicaid programs) recognizes for billing. Certification exams offered by ANCC, AANP, AACN, PNCB, NCC are the only ones approved. Holistic Nursing exam is offered by AHNCC and this is not recognized as an APN certification by CMS.

2. States have various requirements for APN certification but the vast majority require passing a national exam from the boards I mentioned above. There are states that do not require passing a national exam under certain conditions (NY, CA for instance). However, FAU is not located in those states, hence, this program will not be recognized as an APN degree there.

3. Having said that, this seems to be unchartered territory for nurses and is a field that will probably work for someone with a trailblazing frame of mind or is willing to venture into selling ones services to a market that will accept a fee for service arrangement (similar to other alternative modalities such as massage, relaxation therapies, etc.).

http://nursing.fau.edu/?main=2&nav=611

http://ahncc.org/certification/holisticnursingadvance.html

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Specializes in ACNP-BC, Adult Critical Care, Cardiology.

ONCC's AOCNP (Oncology specialty NP) is approved in some states and is approved by CMS.

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