Lack of psychotherapy in Psych MSN?

[topaz3335]

Hi allnurses boards,

I'm an almost new RN (I went through an accelerated direct entry program masters program to get my RN, I already have a degrees in anthropology and english and I'm taking the NCLEX in a few months! yikes!) and I just started my 1st year of my specialty field, which is family psych. I'm only a few months in but I'm already starting to notice a distinct lack of psychotherapy 'courses/classes/discussions/what ever you want to call them' in my program. Now I knew going in that psych NP's focused more on the medication aspect of psych and I also understand that this is the beginning of my specialty education and things might change next year, but I'm wondering if any other psych NP programs offer more in the way of psychotherapy...do any of you other psych NP's feel like you're missing this particular aspect of psychiatry? Have you felt prepared to offer psychotherapy when you graduated? Is this something that Pysch nursing masters are usually short on or it just my program that's lacking? Am I worrying over nothing? Like I said, I'm very new to the field of psych nursing, but not new to psych or mental health itself, so maybe I'm just not familiar with the way things are done here, but I would love any information you all could give me about this.

Thanks, thanks...

[stephva1008]

You will get more of that in a Clinical Nurse Specialist masters program. Psych NP's here make rounds in the hospital, doing mental health assessments and prescribing/managing meds. You won't see too many of them leading psychotherapy though in practices they can do a decent amount of 1:1 counseling along with med management, depending on the practice.

Our psych CNS leads psychotherapy and also does family therapy.

If you're interested in that, I would look into a CNS program...

HTH! Good luck!

[zenman]

I think it depends on the individual program. I did both a psych CNS and psych NP at two different times. My NP program covered psych heavily. I'm actually more interested in therapy than medication management which is why I've turned down jobs wanting me to make money for them by seeing 30 patients a day. The group I'm talking to now thinks like me, therapy with meds as a last resort. If your program doesn't cover psych as much as you like, take some psych electives from psych department.

Or if you want a shortcut, read Bradford Keeney's "The Creative Therapist" and you see that studying most other forms of psychotherapy is a waste. CBT for example almost makes me want to throw up! I'm also a shamanic practitioner. The problem with that approach however, is that your clients only need a few sessions! Lot's of options for you, just be creative and remember Mark Twain when he said something to the effect of "don't let education get in the way of your learning."