The University of Rochester (UR) School of Nursing recently relaunched its Family Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program (FPMHNP) as a distance program to address critical shortages of mental health care providers in New York state and around the country.
Following a distance learning model, students in the program are able to stay at home and in their current jobs while returning to school to advance their careers. Faculty have designed the online courses to offer effective learning techniques in a personal way. Thanks to today’s technology, the program offers face-to-face contact between student and professor so students can ask questions and go over material in detail the same way on-campus students interact with their instructors.
The US Health Resources & Services Administration predicts that the need for mental health care providers will grow acute over the next decade, especially in rural areas where nurses don’t always have access to traditional graduate programs. Susan Blaakman, PhD, RN, NPP-BC, associate professor of clinical nursing and co-director of the FPMHNP program tells the UR Newsroom,
“Our aim is to reach enough students to significantly increase the number of advanced practice providers who are trained in mental health across the lifespan and can deliver care in areas that are in desperate need of these resources.”
To learn more about UR’s Family Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program, visit here.
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