Mental Health Assessment Across the Lifespan
This course provides students with concepts, techniques, and knowledge necessary to conduct accurate mental health evaluations of people across the lifespan. Students learn to collect data guided by the principles of general health screening, psychiatric history, mental status examination, and diagnostic criteria from the DSM-5, therapeutic interviewing, and comprehensive history taking. A bio-psycho-social-cultural-spiritual framework is used to formulate a case history, determine accurate differential diagnoses, and make a psychiatric diagnosis using the DSM-5 framework. Beginning development of treatment planning is also emphasized.
Psychiatric-Mental Health Clinical Practice Across the Lifespan
The goal of this two-term practicum is to provide students with an opportunity to develop clinical skills with individuals and family across the lifespan. While in psychiatric clinical settings, students apply skills including holistic physical and mental health assessment, formulate differential diagnosis, plan and implement developmentally appropriate psychiatric nursing interventions, and evaluate interventions and outcomes with children, adolescents, adults, older adults, and their families. Emphasis is placed on application of a variety of population-specific assessment skills and use of differential diagnosis, and a beginning utilization of pharmacologic and psychotherapeutic treatment methods with individuals, groups, and families.
Advanced Pharmacology
This course is designed for students to build upon their introduction to drug therapy courses. Principles of pharmacology are presented through the study of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Emphasis is placed on drug categories, mechanisms of action, and side effects. Following initial content on general principles, applied interpretation of some of the most common clinical indications and considerations for prescribing are addressed.