The grant team is excited to announce that we now have 34 first- and second-year NP students engaging in the traineeship as BHI Scholars, Associates, and Participants from FNP, AGNP, and PMHNP advanced practice areas. With the continued growth of students eager to gain this important experience, we added a third tier of student “Participants”.
Each category of students has varying degrees of commitment to the program and associated support. Students are very enthusiastic in their participation and serve as ambassadors of the traineeship and actively recruit new participants. For the first-year students, we cover the basics of screening for depression, anxiety, substance use, alcohol use and provide enhanced learning about brief intervention, medications, and referrals for these patients. Many discussions are informal, and students bring up situations encountered in clinical practice and we discuss how to deal with them.
Second-year students have started online training for Medication Assisted Therapy, cultural competency for providers, and advanced psychopharmacology. The majority of second-year students have chosen to work on behavioral health topics for MSN or DNP projects and will disseminate with presentations to the group for their final defense.