Clinical Track Issues for
Psychiatric NP Students

Clinical Placement - The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner tract uses a variety of settings for clinical. Each student must select an agency and be interviewed by the agency personnel. The agreement with agencies is that they interview interested students and placement is a mutual decision between the student and agency.

Clinical Focus/Age Range - Students in the Psych NP Family track need to select an agency seeing clients across the age span. Those students in the Psych NP Adult track should see clients over the age of 18.

Location - Contracts and preceptors have already been identified in the greater Kansas City metropolitan area. Contact course instructors to obtain a list. Many students in outlying areas negotiate with a practice site after contacting faculty to see if it meets the requirements for the course. Since it takes 6-8 weeks to establish a contract with an agency, students need to plan early. Students may choose to do all of their clinical hours at one site, or negotiate for a different site for each semester. Students are responsible for providing their own transportation to and from all clinical experiences.

Current work site - Students are not allowed to use the area they work at for their clinical and are discouraged from using the agency that employs them.

Course Sequence - At this time, the Psych NP track is offered every other year. The next offering for Psychiatric Mental Health II: Chronic illness (2 credit theory & 2 credits clinical) is planned for Spring 2003. Preceptorship (Psych III) will follow in the Summer of 2003.

Preceptorship (Psych III) - Credit hours will vary from 3-5 based on the number of hours the student needs to meet certification. 3 credit hours involve 192 clinical hours and 5 credit hours entails 320 hours. Since the summer semester is only 8 weeks long, please begin planning for this time commitment now. We suggest that you save money, vacation/leave time at your job for this course so that you can complete the required clinical with little to no working.

Clinical Hours - The Psych NP program counts clinical hours as follows:

The minimum number of clinical hours required by both American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), the certifying exam organization, and the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculty (NONPF) is 500. The Kansas Board of Nursing is setting the minimum at 500 hours also.