This will differ a lot between students. Before going to graduate school, I had worked 1.5 years on a general medical/ICU unit then went to inpatient county psych hospital for 1.5 years before starting DNP school. I enrolled part-time (5 years program) while I continued to work part time inpatient psych. I can tell you that I had seen enough borderliners, schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar/manic/depressive clients come through before I even started school to predict what the psychiatrist was diagnosing them with. With pharm, as an RN, I had learned all the common medications that were used by the psychiatrists but every now and then they would surprised me with an older medication that totally made my day.
We do not get the same biological science back ground as psychiatrist, but I assure you that we are required to learn about every neurotransmitter, receptor and anatomy of the brain with our curriculum. You should as a preceptor focus on the pearls of prescribing and pearls of assessing. What little things do you as the psychiatrist that you notice that would help differentiate schizoaffective from schizophrenia or other psychiatric disorders....and how do you decide which pharmaceutical agent to utilize.....why fluoxetine vs sertraline vs cymbalta or something else for a depress client? Remember, besides psychiatrist, the only other provider that can help alleviate psycho-pharm management shortage with a decent level of competency are psych NP's (or PA's with psych background, or family physician with heavy psych focus, don't want to offend anyone....)
HighlandMinority
