natem137

I would contact the admission department. They are there to help you understand the proccess not to obfoscate it. I'm sure they would be happy to help explain what the difference is.

I'm a psych nurse in LA. There are no NP residencys here that I've heard of at all. As for the hospitals that have a psych department there are actually several: USC county, olive view, Glendale Adventist, UCLA, Loma Linda, and Kaiser. There are also a lot of free standing psychiatric hospitals not attached to a medical hospital. Lastly there is a lot of out patient psychiatric programs, the most predominant is Didi Hirsch. As for psych NP's there are not very many. NPs in CA are basically used as physician extenders, like harmonizer mentioned there is very little anotonmy. We have one NP in our department and even the other nurses keep calling her a PA. I'm not trying to tell you not to do it just be aware of what you're getting into.

So I just emailed them at [email protected] telling them that I was interested in a tour and talking to someone from the nursing department about their FNP program. They have an office just for graduate school applicants and are really helpful is setting up tours and informations sessions.

I am applying to the RN-MSN program for FNP. I am from Seattle but live in California right now so I won't be able to make any of their information sessions. I contacted them and they set up a meeting with an admission coordinator, a tour of the campus and a meeting with one of the directors of the program. If you want their contact info I can PM it to you. Basically the feeling I got was that it's a small program focused on training practicing NP's. They gaurantee clinical placement and offer a lot of different clinical sites, including, suprisingly, UW clinics. They are geared toward nurses working at least part time while in the program. Classes take place once a week and are all done in person.

The role of a critical care nurse working on the floor and NP, either family or acute care, are two very different roles. If you are just starting your residency my recommendation would be to wait. You are going to be going to a lot of classes and learning way more than you did in school the next 6 months. I tell every new grad to wait a year until going back to school. That first year of being an actual nurse is stressful enough. You don't need to pile school on top of it. Also after a year you will have a better idea of where you want your career to go.