The Nuts and Bolts of Integrating Behavioral Health Skills in a Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Curriculum

The Nuts and Bolts of Integrating Behavioral Health Skills in a Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Curriculum

The need for the primary care nurse practitioner (NP) to recognize, assess, and treat mental health issues has long been part of delivering comprehensive healthcare. However, adding more content to an already overloaded curriculum invites an innovative approach. In a curriculum where problem-based learning (PBL) is the primary teaching strategy in an online DNP program, mental health issues were woven into the PBL cases as either the primary reason for the visit or as a secondary diagnosis that the student would need to consider when prescribing new medications and/or referrals. Faculty have also included completed screening tools in the PBL cases requiring students to interpret the results. Faculty continued to feel gaps still existed that were best taught during face-to-face interaction. Faculty looked to the Immersions beginning with Advanced Health Assessment, as a means to address these gaps. During Immersion plenary sessions, small group, interactive discussions were added along with:

 

• Case-based practice with behavioral health screening tools, such as PHQ-9 and GAD-7, in Advanced Health Assessment.
• Case-based role-playing practice of motivational interviewing and short-term cognitive behavioral therapy during the first clinical course
• Practice addressing gender specific lifespan issues and psychosocial co-morbidities associated with chronic illness during the second clinical course
• Practice with case-based primary care management of psychopharmacology within the primary care NPs scope of practice and review of resources for specialized care for mental health issues during the third clinical course

In addition to exposing the student to the mental health issues commonly seen in primary care, appropriate diagnostic tools, and evidence-based treatment strategies, additional skills such as communication in difficult situations,  handling grief and loss, and challenges in chronic illness.

This presentation will deconstruct the process faculty used to build behavioral health knowledge and skills into the clinical course content map as well as the Immersions in an authentic way based on the constructivist paradigm while being mindful of scaffolding student learning.