The nursing profession today has become the most challenging, exciting and in-demand profession in the healthcare sector. It now needs professionals who are highly qualified, equipped to handle any kind of emergency situation and put the patient’s life first. The work environment is tough, as at times nurses are required to keep their cool and act spontaneously according to the situation, in order to help the patient / save the patient’s life. Even though the physicians/doctors help in curing the illness, it is the ever smiling nurse practitioners who care and tend to the patients and bring them back to the best of their health.
Education & Certification
To be an exceptional healthcare nursing professional, a simple master’s degree in nursing is not sufficient. Adequate training and hands on experience is the need of the hour. After acquiring the Master’s degree, the nurse practitioner becomes an advanced registered certified nurse practitioner, by undergoing the requisite clinical training and specialized education. An advanced practiced registered nurse practitioner (APRN) is qualified to perform a higher role with higher levels of responsibility, care and tasks. They undergo specialization in any one of the many fields such as Paediatrics, Psychiatrics, internal medicine, adult geriatrics, family health care etc.
Nursing schools – Do they teach all?
Learning from certified nurse practitioners and the nursing school; the basics of health care, the roles and responsibilities of a nurse and being in the midst of a medical situation are completely different. Sometimes, nurses are completely taken aback in the initial days of service. There are situations which need to be experienced and are not taught in school. Here’s a list of things that a nurse may never learn in school.
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Touching people’s life-this is such an amazing profession that one easily underestimates the extent to which nurses touch the lives of patients and how it actually feels to do so. A nurse practitioner is a blessed soul, who is a witness to the beginning and the end of life.
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Compassion becomes an integral part–No lecture can prepare nurses for the immense change that occurs when they tend to the sick or hold a dying person’s hand or even cry with sick patient’s family. Compassion becomes a truly integral part to the nurse practitioner.
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Mastering the art of being patient- A nurse becomes patience personified for the sake of the patients’ and their family members. A pile of work may be staring at the nurse practitioners. But for the sake of the patient, they hear out the concerns of the family members, console them and make them feel much better.
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There is nothing called as personal time – Health care sector can be so demanding that sometimes nurse practitioners do not have time to eat or even drink a glass of water. This is a reality and they have master time management.
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Learning to multitask – Though not taught at school, this is one skill that every nurse practitioner has to learn, sooner or later.
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Learning to deal with doctors – Every doctor is a different personality. Nurse practitioners come across many physicians and doctors during the work schedule. They have to learn to communicate effectively and efficiently with the doctors and also learn to deal with sometimes uncooperative doctors.
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Treatment management – Hands on experience of dealing with various cases makes practitioner well versed with the treatment care to be prescribed.
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Team work – Nursing schools do not teach how important it is to work as team along with co – workers. It is only through experience and helping out each other, does the benefits of camaraderie and team work, visible.
In the end, a genuine interest to work in healthcare and the love to help the sick bounce back to the best of health make nursing an exciting and humble profession.
There are a number of psychiatric nurse practitioner programs to train these professionals and make them fit for the job. It is a very crucial job that takes a lot of hard work and dedication. Basically a family psychiatric nurse practitioner is supposed to deal with special kind patients so they have to be very efficient and feel the work they are doing and feel for the patients. Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner specifically handles patients with mental illness and thus they need to be very careful while working.
Barkley & Associates, Inc. 
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