Inaugural Advanced Practice Provider Skills Course and Career Panel

Advance practice providers (APPs) constitute much of the consultation-liaison (C-L) workforce. According to a 2022 survey of C-L service directors by the ACLP Interdisciplinary Education Subcommittee, 42% of inpatient C-L teams included APPs. C-L service directors indicated an intention to expand C-L services, including a significant proportion of APPs.

APP certification programs, including nurse practitioner (NP) and physician assistant (PA) programs, have broad curricular requirements but vary in the quality of clinical experiences. Commonly, newly graduated NPs and PAs must rapidly acquire clinical knowledge in their specialty area, leading to a stressful transition to practice and a tendency toward underconfidence. Outside of the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner certification and nascent PA psychiatry fellowships, APP certification programs do not include a standardized psychiatry curriculum. Further, there is no standardized consultation-liaison (C-L) curriculum, despite the complexity and urgency of problems that arise in C-L settings. Studies have identified the need for ongoing education and professional development to improve APPs' competence and confidence. Additionally, peer and mentor support facilitate APPs' transition to practice. With the development of new models of inpatient and outpatient C-L team-based care, C-L psychiatrists occupy a role in the development and implementation of the curriculum for our APP colleagues.

The authors aim to address APP training gaps by offering a half-day skills course covering C-L essentials such as delirium, agitation, safety assessment, functional neurologic disorder, and addiction. We will provide clinically relevant didactics led by physicians and interactive case discussions co-facilitated by physicians and APPs that target an audience of C-L APPs of all levels. Longitudinal themes incorporated in case discussions include psychopharmacology, medication safety, liaising and relationship building skills, identifying one's scope, and utilizing team resources. After the skills course, we will host an APP networking lunch and career panel, bolstering the peer and mentoring networks necessary for APPs' successful C-L practice.

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