Psychiatric NP's on hospital consult service?

[ivyleaf]

Has anyone ever heard of PMHNP's working on a psych. consult service in a hospital? I currently work as an RN case manager for an MD-run psychiatric consult-liaison service in a large teaching hospital. The service is mainly made up of fellows and residents-in-training. They are referred by the attending MD's on the medical floors and see pts. all over the hospitals (ex's being pt's on medical floor or ICU post over-dose, pts on burn unit who set themselves on fire, pt on ortho unit who broke his leg jumping out of a building, elderly man w/CRF & worsening depression/SI).

I would love to do this kind of work (seeing psych pts on medical floors, doing assessment and dx) but I have no interest in going to medical school to be a psychiatrist!! Do NP's ever get these kind of jobs?? What hospital psych NP jobs are you aware of? Most PMHNP's I see are in the outpatient setting, which I'm not really interested in.

In my hospital there is an PMHNP in the ED who assess pts & prescribes, & several "psych CNS's" (they are experienced nurses who got the degree way before PMHNP existed) who consult to medical floors on behavioral management issues (vs. diagnosis/prescribing, which is what I would like to do). There are no NP's on the inpt psych floor.

Thanks!!

[kris_10]

I'm not an RN and don't work directly in the hospital, but I am 99% sure there is at least one PMHNP doing consults at the med center where I work.