NR 548 Week 6 Reflection on Learning

In this week’s reflection and progression of psychiatric assessment, I have come to realize that the interview process is not just about the client’s interview answers and physical presentation. What I am realizing is that there are two people involved in a trust establishing relationship where the client is revealing his/her deepest darkest moments in life and the practitioner is carefully conducting the interview while delicately navigating through a person’s history of present illness to understand how to best help that person. According to Carlat (2017), even experienced clinicians differ in how they approach the HPI, and in my opinion that is where the art of the interview begins. Therefore, to answer the question how prepared are you to conduct a psychiatric interview in your clinic rotation? My answer is 7/10, but to be completely honest we don’t know what sort of patient we may face. This course and the entire program have prepared us well for the science of the psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner role and with time and psychiatric patient exposure and interview we will improve our skills as psychiatric interviewers and practitioners. The resources that I will be using in my clinical rotations will be Carlat’s Psychiatric Interview book, as well as Stahl’s Prescriber’s Guide. Furthermore, I will use my skills as a nurse to engage in personal communication, active listening, and most of all observing my professional preceptor and taking notes on how he conducts his interviews and implements his treatment plans. Reference: Carlat, D. J. (2017).The psychiatric interview(4th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.