Curious about a psych PhD after MSN-PMHNP

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priorities2

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Hey everyone, just graduated with a bachelor of science-nursing and am headed to a psych mental health nurse practitioner master's program in the fall. It will take me two years. I've been an undergrad worker on various psych research studies and while I was not at all passionate about the grit work of research (coding, data entry, organization), lately I have been realizing that there is a lot of stuff I want to study. I'm becoming more interested in doing my own research. However, I can't see myself sitting in an office looking at a computer all day long. I'd like to practice as an NP much of the time and do some research on the side. I'm trying to decide if I should go for a PhD in nursing, but my real passions are family systems theory and addiction studies. Does anyone have any insight into a good route I could take to further my interest in these areas? Would a PhD in nursing be best, or should I be looking more at a PhD in psychology? Or is the whole thing sort of "pie in the sky"... would be best to stick with the NP route and is it somehow possible to pursue these interests as a master's prepared NP?

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If your primary career goal is to practice nursing at the NP level, I don't see why you couldn't get involved in some research on the side with a master's alone. You can certainly publish clinical reviews, case reports, meta-analyses, and so forth. A Ph.D. will prepare you to carry out original research projects as a principal investigator, which seems like overkill for the level of research involvement you are aiming for.

When you finish your NP program, look for a position in an academic health center or a clinic that has a strong academic affiliation, then network with people who are involved in research. You might find that you are happy being a collaborator without taking on the burden of the PI role (talk about grit work!). But the wonderful thing about nursing is that if you really do want to take your research involvement to a higher level, you can transition to a nursing Ph.D. program later on. Nurses do research in all of the major areas of mental health and there is a national nursing faculty shortage (unlike the situation in psychology, where competition for faculty jobs is cutthroat). Doing a Ph.D. in psychology would not only entail a longer amount of time in school but would also strike me as a career-changing move.
 
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