The Medical College of Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will partner on a new postgraduate residency program for psychiatry mental health nurse practitioners, funded by a $1.7 million federal grant.
The four-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration will allow MCW’s department of psychiatry and behavioral medicine, its department of medicine and UWM’s College of Nursing to launch the residency program in January 2020.
“Shortage of mental health professionals is a crisis, particularly for youth, and more so for low-income families,” said Julie Raaum, director of the Medical College Physicians Office of Advanced Practice at MCW and principal investigator on the grant. “Wisconsin has fewer mental health professionals per capita than most states, and this nurse residency is one of many efforts to increase the numbers of mental health professionals.”
The program targets nurse practitioners who have been practicing 18 months or fewer and are seeking a specialty in psychiatry and mental health. It will be a supervised year of clinical practice and continuing education at community-based settings to train mental health nurses to provide care to underserved populations in the Milwaukee area.
“UWM launched its Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner certificate program in January 2019,” said Kim Litwack, dean at the UWM College of Nursing. “This partnership provides additional clinical training, building on our solid educational platform preparing highly educated practitioners immediately prepared to meet the increased need for mental health services of the state.”
The residency will include mentored learning in clinical rotations including general psychiatric ambulatory clinics, general inpatient psychiatric unit, child and adolescent psychiatry, embedded psychiatric ambulatory clinics and psychiatry consult liaison service. Additional elective rotations will include a focus on mental health and HIV, mental health and LGBTQ, student mental health and community partners.
