The online Psychiatric Mental Health Certificate is a post-masters/post-DNP certification program available to certified Nurse Practitioner graduates who would like to gain additional knowledge in advanced practice psychiatric mental health nursing of family. Incoming graduate students must have taken the following graduate level courses prior to starting the program: Advance Health Assessment, Advance Pathophysiology, and Advance Pharmacology. The certificate will allow the graduate to sit for the Psychiatric Mental Health Certification.
The program prepares students to provide comprehensive and integrative psychiatric mental health care to those in need of psychiatric services, as well as those who are at risk.
This program is online; however, a majority of the courses have a synchronous component, which means that face to face zoom classes will be schedules throughout the semester depending on the course.
The program has 23 graduate level credits of mental health theory and 540 hours of supervised clinical experiences in three psychotherapeutic treatment modalities (individual, group and family) and encompasses treatment across the life span, from childhood through senescence. Adult NPs are required to take an additional 3 hour Pediatric course and Pediatric NPs are required to take an additional 3 hours Adult and Women Advance Practice course. The rational for this requirement stems from the ANCC Consensus Model APRN Consensus Model and Licensure, Accreditation, Certification, Education (LACE) which has adopted a lifespan approach for the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner PMH APRN certification, which includes preparing PMH-APRN to care for individuals, family, groups, and communities from pre-birth.
Application Deadlines
(OCTOBER 1 FOR A SPRING START AND DEADLINE APRIL 1 FOR FALL START)
*Federal Financial Aid is not available for students enrolled in the Psychiatric Mental Health Certificate program.
Clinical Clearance:
As part of the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner certificate program students are required to complete a total of 540 clinical hours. In order to start the clinical hours students must complete the clinical clearance process with COMPLIO. The cost of setting up the clinical clearance with COMPLIO is $174 and all students must have an account with COMPLIO, no exceptions. The Office of Student Services in the College of Nursing ensures that each student is cleared to go into the clinical setting.
Preceptors
Students will work with the Program and Clinical Coordinators to secure preceptors for the program. All preceptor forms are submitted to the Clinical Coordinator and are approved by the Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs. Preceptors can be MD, PA, APRN, psychologist, and social workers that work in the proper setting to gain the required experience.