PMHNP Psychotherapy Rotation

[PG2018]

This summer I'm doing a psychotherapy rotation, and frankly I'm at a loss. Nowhere has our curriculum covered any of this. We've had a small bit of "therapeutic communication," as nearly all nursing-oriented classes do, but when I called the program chair to see what we'd be doing, (e.g. observation or what) she said "no, you'll manage your own patients individually or facilitate group." We're told we can work with psychologists, psych examiners, clinical social workers, counselors, etc, but...

What the heck?! I don't know anything about this and am totally at a loss.

Did any of you have to do such a thing? I don't mind counseling and feel that structured "talk therapy" has a huge role in mental health disorders. I'd love to learn more about it, but the problem is I don't know anything about it. I'm supposed to do it this summer too. Yikes!

[yhl1975]

How to "hold" patients individually or facilitate group?

I worked with mental health counselors, marriage therapists, psychologists and social workers. Some of them at school all their life : CBT/Psychotherapy/ biofeedback/neurofeetback/family treatments(Minchin/family constellation) and many other. Some of practitioners pay for supervision and get privet psychotherapy.

Our nursing education in regular PMHNP programs is not covering all options of treatments. From my experience your could be exposed to some "holding patients" skills , if you know how to attach patients to the treatment plan and your skills are regular.

Good for you if you going through individual and group therapy training. All this skills can help in the future with the clients in every settings and they can help you in your personal life.