Week 1 Practicum Journal Entry: Certification Plan

Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) being an advanced practice registered nurse is trained to practice a series or wide range of mental health services to patient and families in any form of settings as the case may be with the aim and objective of providing relieve and quality mental health to patient with mental health and behavioral problems. Thus a PMHNPs is trained to diagnose, provide therapy, and prescribe medication to patients with psychiatric and behavioral problems as a result of dysfunction in the family, drug problem, sexaul abuse, etc. Thereby developing a treatment plan that would allow the patient to manage the problems. PMHNPs is licenced to practice emergency psychiatric service, physical assessment, psychosocial service and treatment plan to help the patient with long term management of the mental or behavioral problems. The fact that PMHNPs can perform the afore-mentioned service therefore put these medical professionals in the unique position to work in collaboration with physicians and other healthcare professionals in the industry and at the same time can practice their profession on their own by opening their practice to treat patients as mentioned above. (De & Allen, 2016). However, it is unfortunate that not every state in the United States allows PMHNPs to practice alone without the supervision of physicians, that is, PMHNPs do not have Full Practice Authority (FPA) in some states in this country in which unfortunately my great state of Texas is among such state that refuse to allow PMHNP to practice independently or open their own practice. T