Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner training programs may not provide required clinical rotations.

Those that do not provide their own rotations require students to find these themselves, which can be hard.

Many students find this experience highly stressful and there are quality questions about the process.

PMHNP programs should take on additional roles in providing rotations for their students.

An ever-increasing percentage of psychiatric care in the United States is being delivered by Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioners (PMHNPs). To earn this credential, one must first get a nursing degree. Then, the most common path is to obtain a Masters of Science in Nursing with a psychiatric specialization. These programs typically last two years with the first year being primarily classroom based (which can be online) and the second year being comprised of supervised clinical rotations with students required to see a certain volume of patients or meet a target number of clinical hours.

This pathway is different from that of psychiatrists, who first go to medical school for four years and then specialize in psychiatry for an additional four years of clinical training in a psychiatry residency. To further specialize into fields like child and adolescent or forensic psychiatry, additional year(s) are needed in a fellowship program.

Aside from differences in the duration of training between psychiatrists and nurse practitioners, another key distinction has to do with the clinical........

© Psychology Today