A typical pa program curriculum includes 2 semesters of didactic work in pharmacology followed by a clinical year with rotations in all the major disciplines( internal medicine, surgery, peds, psych, obgyn, family medicine, and em) during which this knowledge is honed and applied under the direction of licensed physicians.assuming clinical psychologists limit their rxs to psych meds I think most midlevel providers would not have a problem with this. as long as the provider knows the indications, absolute contraindications, drug interactions, etc for each med they use on an approved formulary this should work well.the psychiatrists on this forum will probably disagree with me on this. be ready for the flame backlash.
there are pa's who work fulltime in psych and prescribe the full complement of psych meds( many of these are residency trained in psych- see
www.appap.org for info on these residencies) but most of us outside of psych or primary care tend not to, although it is within our legal scope of practice.I can't remember the last time I wrote for one of these meds.of course there are probably not a lot of psychiatrists who direct the use of acls drugs (although they certainly could legally.)...codes at the state mental hospital....I guess it must happen every now and then.....
IMHO graduate psychologists certainly have a better background in mental illness than midlevel providers( and most non-psych md/do folk) so the addition of limited prescribing rights makes sense in this setting.
