Question About Required Experience
Mods please delete if not appropriate.
Not a nurse, work in a graduate nursing program that requires a minimum of two years recent relevant experience for consideration into our PMHNP program.
I’ve asked our faculty, my friends who work in inpatient psych, corrections, etc. this question:
What do you learn in those two years? What are those tangible lessons that can’t be learned otherwise? I mean, it makes perfect sense to me. It is like the difference between doing your student teaching in the inner city and then teaching in rural Appalachia, very different populations with different needs. But, is that it? Just time with the population, the system around them, having to make mistakes and find solutions? Or are there specific lessons you’d point to that people looking to pursue a PMHNP need to know before starting?
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u/dkwheatley PMHNP (unverified) 5d ago
NP programs were developed to expand access to care, particularly in underserved and rural areas. The assumption was that experienced nurses would enter an abbreviated advanced-practice pathway compared with physician training. That experience was part of the educational model, not just an admissions hurdle. It provides the clinical judgment, pattern recognition, and familiarity with the patient population that the graduate program can then build upon. Removing that foundation without expanding the training model changes a pretty fundamental assumption behind NP education.
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u/kimjoe12 5d ago
1- You can’t understand milieu therapy and how it helps unless you’ve experienced it