How to Become a Psychiatric Nurse

A psychiatric nurse provides a number of important services to patients. Psychiatric nurses specialize in the assessment and treatment of psychiatric conditions and mental disorders. Substance abuse treatment often falls to the psychiatric nurse as well, which can make the job options for this career very diverse.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Nursing degree from an accredited institution.

1. Take all necessary tests for admittance to an accredited nursing program. Typically, these will include the SAT or ACT in high school, and the NET or TEAS tests to get into a nursing program. For all these tests, you must have at least a tenth grade reading ability, a high knowledge of math and science and stellar social interaction skills.
2. Find an accredited nursing program you want to enroll in and apply for admission. Be sure to include relevant nursing experience on your application, such as candy-striping or other volunteer positions.
3. Complete the necessary course work provided by your academic institution and as established by the state nursing board. While every state is different, there will typically be a heavy concentration on biology, chemistry, anatomy and psychology.
4. Pass your state's required nursing certification/licensing test.
5. Learn to assess mental health related conditions and to diagnose them. The psychiatric nurse will then create treatment programs for patients.
6. Be prepared to go beyond the RN or BSN degree. To become a psychiatric nurse, you will need more education than most other nursing specialties. After you've earned an Associate degree, then a Bachelor's degree, you may need to continue on to earn a Master's degree or even a doctoral degree. It is quite common for a psychiatric nurse to have an advanced degree because she will have worked as an educator, consultant or therapist.
7. Choose a specialty in this field. Once you become a psychiatric nurse, you can choose to specialize in one of several varied fields such as substance abuse, forensics, psychiatric nursing for the elderly or psychiatric nursing for children and adolescents.
8. Get the most out of your rotations. Most accredited nursing programs rotate students through the various fields of nursing during their coursework to expose them to different specialties. This will help you decide if psychiatric issues are where your passion lies.
9. Find out what is required of you from the American Nurses Credentialing Center at nursingworld.org (see Resources below).

Tips & Warnings

• Volunteer at a mental institution or psychiatric clinic before nursing school to boost your qualifications and to see if this career is really for you.
• Because of the rigorous educational requirements and unique job stresses involved in psychiatric nursing, there is a high rate of burnout in the field.

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