To become a psychiatric NP are the courses the same as medical NP?

[NightNurse714]

Do you have to take the same medical courses during psych NP school as you would if you were becoming an medical NP?

[verene, MSN]

No you do not take the same courses as these are different specialties. All ARNP specialties have to take core courses in assessment, pharmacology, and physiology/pathophysiology, however once those courses are completed the specialties focus on coursework that will be relevant to their specialty. This means in a psychiatric NP program courses on psychopharmacology, assessment & diagnosis of mental health conditions, and psychotherapy, as well as course work specific to issues in child/adolescent psych and geropscyh.

Whereas a primary care FNP will focus on routine primary care issues with classes like reproductive health, primary care for children, and primary care for adults, and so on. Just as an acute-care NP will have courses focuses on their needs for the in-patient setting with course work focused on their population (peds or adult/gero) and how to manage the care of acutely ill patients.

If you are considering these programs I highly suggest doing research on the differences between them. Many schools post sample schedules of study and course guides, just reading those those should give some sense of how different they are.

[Oldmahubbard]

There is some overlap, quite a bit of overlap actually, between the courses for the different programs, but the Psych NP program has coursework that is specific, as it should be.

[umbdude, MSN, APRN]

~47% of my psych NP curriculum is psych focus, the rest are the nursing core that everyone takes regardless of specialty.