Robbie McCauley, Assistant Professor, Associate Dean of Graduate Programs
Health & Life Sciences Building, (540) 545-7267, rmccaule87@su.edu

The School of Nursing offers a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) Post Graduate Certificate for RNs who hold a Master of Science in Nursing Degree or are Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) with a MSN in psychiatric and mental-health nursing. The post-graduate certificate is designed to provide the nurse with the necessary knowledge, skills, values and experiences to assume the role of a PMHNP in a variety of faculty or preceptor-supervised clinical settings. The program consists of didactic and clinical course content addressing differential diagnoses, psychotherapy, medication management and treatments specific to behavioral/psychiatric conditions across the lifespan. The post-graduate PMHNP student will complete 600 clinical clock hours during this program.  Admission to this program occurs in the summer. Graduates are eligible to take the American Nurses Credentialing Certification (ANCC) Family PMHNP examination.

This Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) program also has an initiative (collaborative relationship) between the Shenandoah University School of Nursing and other schools of nursing. Through this arrangement, the graduate nursing students attending collaborative agreement schools will receive a graduate degree from the home university and a post-graduate certificate in PMHNP from Shenandoah University.   Students in an initiative program will complete core requirements from the home university before entering the Shenandoah University PMHNP program of study.

Graduates of the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Specialty Track will be able to:

1.  Employ clinical reasoning to integrate social and scientific theories, research and evidence-based practice principles in the diagnosis, treatment and management of behavioral and psychiatric mental health problems across the lifespan.

2. Collaborate with interprofessional teams to enhance recovery of populations with behavioral and mental health illnesses.

3. Apply ethical and legal standards in the delivery of behavioral and psychiatric mental health care as an advanced practice nurse.

4. Apply evidence-based practice standards to the utilization of psychopharmacologic, psychotherapeutic and complementary interventions in the treatment of acute and chronic behavioral and psychiatric mental health problems across the lifespan.

5.Demonstrate competencies of an advanced psychiatric mental health nurse in the provision of care, the advancement of the profession and in the development and implementation of mental health policy on the local, state and national level.