Any Pmhnps here? I have a couple of questions?

Jules A, MSN · Nov 22, 2018

The job market largely depends on your area and contacts. Although some, who don't work in this specialty, will insist there are millions of openings for high salaries based on the spam emails they receive, that simply is not true across the board any longer. My school is a highly ranked brick and mortar state university. I attended back when there were entrance requirements, some of the professors had actually worked in the field and there weren't so many programs that anyone with a pulse was accepted. You will get many different opinions but mine is without my years of solid inpatient psychiatric RN experience I do not believe the superficial education I received would have made me a safe or competent clinician. If you can't go back to med school which would be the best option I would highly recommend getting inpatient experience as a psych RN before embarking on the flimsy 4 credit pharmacology course that gives you prescribing rights.

Oldmahubbard · Nov 22, 2018

I could not comment on the job market. I do greatly fear low quality graduates flooding the market.

I went to a private brick and mortar school with a good reputation, and if I had only met their requirements, I would have been totally unprepared upon graduation. Fortunately, I knew from a previous career that there is a big difference between being prepared on paper, and being prepared. I worked full time in the field for 5 years, and took one or two classes a semester. I had no choice at the time, but it was the best thing to truly prepare me. I did extensive self preparation, case studies of my patients. I read everything I could find. I did nothing but eat and sleep psychiatry. I had a fire in my belly and I was not going to get out of school and be unable to handle the clinical setting. I worked with some doctors who were good role models, and some who showed me what not to do. When the time came, I was ready. There were still things to learn of course, but the basics had been ground into me. I ground them in myself.

My program? Not at all. Our department head was a Psych NP on paper only and believed mostly in Freud. This was before online, so I had no choice of program. As it was I drove 2 hours each way to class.

NP school is way too easy and much too superficial. My pharmacology class exams were open book.

Poor quality programs are cropping up everywhere. They take anyone with a BSN. One in the Buffalo area has some type of a social worker or counselor as department head. I don't know how they get away with it. They also allow inexperienced NPs to be preceptors.

It will be tough,almost impossible to get clinical hours if you don't have contacts in the field. Even with contacts, it will still be very difficult.

I would ask a lot of questions and look very closely at programs. But even if you go to the best program, you still won't be any good without fairly extensive RN experience in psychiatry.

Unfortunately even the best programs are only requiring a year or two of RN experience, and not necessarily in the field. I shake my head.

We are unleashing a crop of poorly prepared people on the public and the board certification exam is not hard enough to weed them out. That test is a complete joke.

I worked for many years at a state forensic facility and the only RN there that went on to become a Psych NP was at the bottom of the barrell in his nursing knowledge and ability to interact with patients. Another RN, a friend who I encouraged, quit the NP program after a year because she said they weren't showing her how to be a Psych NP. I had warned her about that, I told her extensive self preparation outside of school requirements will be needed.

Obviously, it angers and embarrasses me that people are going through easy programs, somehow getting clinical hours (of what quality?) and calling themselves Psych NPs and they don't have the goods.