Preparing the nurse practitioner workforce for the mental health needs of older adults

One in five older adults has a mental health problem that impedes their everyday function and quality of life. This means that all nurse practitioners working with older adults will encounter patients with cognitive and mental health problems.  Yet, very few nurse practitioners have formal preparation to recognize and address older adults’ cognitive and mental health needs.  With funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative (GPNC) is addressing this gap in two ways.  First, we have developed and infused geriatric mental health competency enhancements into the most recent APRN competencies/educational requirements and mapped them to four categories of key concepts: Mental health assessment, care management, approach to older adults and advanced practice nursing’s role in mental health protection and promotion.  Secondly, we are building an easy- to-use internet resource site to enable faculty to readily find, select and use related teaching materials.  Using sample competency enhancement statements and related key concepts, we will demonstrate how nurse practitioner faculty can use our GPNC site on www.pogoe.org to locate linked curricular resources and infuse them into their classroom, self-directed, and clinical practicum teaching.  To enhance geriatric mental health competencies, knowledge, and skills for APRNs who care for older adults, the GPNC undertook extensive reviews of curriculum and internet-based resources and matched these resources to the developed key concepts and mental health competencies. Housed at the American Academy of Nursing, the GPNC is facilitating faculty contributions to improving the mental and cognitive health needs of older adults.  The goals of this presentation are to: support the need to include mental health and aging in curricula preparing nurse practitioners who will encounter older adults; demonstrate the use of online resources that are catalogued by Geropsychiatric competencies and key concepts developed by the GPNC; and discuss the role of nurse practitioner faculty in bridging the mental health knowledge gap.