Graduating with a BA in Psychology, curious about nursing opportunities.

Farawyn · Jul 14, 2015

I graduated with a BA in Psych, went to nursing, and never looked back. While Psych still interests me (I'm a school nurse and deal with drugs, cutting, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, rape, mental illness and the DD population) I didn't want to go hardcore like these guys here. You can use your psych with any field in nursing.

You will have to go to nursing school, obviously. You will have pretty much only your nursing core and sciences to take. Good luck!

Dogen · Jul 15, 2015

What's nursing school like? What types of positions are available in psych?
My main interest lies in helping children and adolescents with psychiatric and behavioral disorders. My concern is that I would be doing more of the hands-on kind of work. Does a nurse do the same kind of work across all specialties?
What kind of setting do you work in and what is your day like?

So, I also have a BA in psych, and I work inpatient psychiatry (that just means inside a hospital). The majority of inpatient rooms are adult. There are 4 adult psych rooms for every child psych bed in Portland, which is depressing (because there's just generally a shortage of both), but also means getting jobs on child psych units is tough.

Generally speaking, inpatient psych nurses focus more on medications (both voluntary and involuntary), managing side effects, doing any medical care that's needed (which usually isn't much), monitoring the patient's overall condition, and lots of charting. All of that is assuming I have help - a person called a mental health therapist at my hospital - who does the mental health assessment. Usually I have six patients and will be paired with an MHT on four of them, so on the other two I do the mental health assessment and safety planning in addition to the above stuff.

Nurses are medical providers, obviously, so most of the jobs will focus on medications. In OR we aren't allowed to provide therapy, for instance. You can find them at clinics as "med nurses," where people in the community come to the clinic everyday to get their meds, which often includes injection of long-acting psych meds. This type of clinic is typically working with underserved populations - the homeless, low socioeconomic status, etc. You can also find nurses in long term care facilities with a mental health or behavioral health focus, such as Alzheimer's facilities or child/adolescent residential facilities (like the Parry Center here in Portland). Umm... if you're super connected you might be able to get a job doing blood draws/giving meds on a psych research team, but the jobs are few and far between.

I'm sure we're other places that I can't think of off the top of my head.

emmercs · Jul 15, 2015

Thanks Dogen!

I'm curious; are you an RN or a PMHNP? I'm getting very confused with the terms and how they differ! :) How different are the day-to-day routines?

Dogen · Jul 15, 2015

Thanks Dogen!
I'm curious; are you an RN or a PMHNP? I'm getting very confused with the terms and how they differ! :) How different are the day-to-day routines?

I'm an RN, I have a bachelors (BSN). A PMHNP has a graduate degree (typically a masters). PMHNPs diagnose acute and chronic illnesses, write prescriptions, do therapy, order and interpret labs and tests, and do more advanced assessments. They're most often found in outpatient settings, such as a private practice, community mental health clinics, and state health departments, but some are also in places like long-term care facilities (aka nursing homes), hospitals, student health centers, jails, or teaching.

I mentioned therapy above, but the truth is that most PMHNPs don't do therapy. Because a PMHNP is a prescriber most agencies prefer to have them managing medications while therapists (who make about half as much) perform therapy. PMHNPs are typically paid either by the hour or by productivity (number of patients seen), and because managing meds is reimbursed by insurance at a higher rate than therapy, agencies need PMHNPs to bill for a lot of services in order to earn their keep. The exception is if you're a PMHNP in private practice (which is easier to do in some state than others) because then you can do whatever you want, as long as it's within your scope of practice.