Medical College of Wisconsin and UWM establish nurse practitioner residency program

Thanks to a $1.7 million, four-year grant from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, the Medical College of Wisconsin Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine and Medicine will launch a nurse practitioner postgraduate residency program, beginning in January 2020.

Funds will allow the Medical College to partner with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Nursing on the program, which will be targeted specifically toward psychiatry mental health nurse practitioners.

The program will be a structured, supervised year of clinical practice and continuing education at community-based settings to prepare mental health nurses to provide care to underserved populations in the Milwaukee area. The residency will train four nurse practitioners, and offers mentored learning in various clinical rotations, including general psychiatric ambulatory clinics, general inpatient psychiatric unit, child and adolescent psychiatry, embedded psychiatric ambulatory clinics and psychiatry consult liaison service. Elective rotations are also available focused on mental health and HIV, mental health and LGBTQ, student mental health and community partners.

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 builds upon both the Medical College’s longstanding commitment to address the health needs of the medically underserved in the Milwaukee area, as well as UW-Milwaukee’s long history of training compassionate nurse leaders.

“UWM launched its Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner certificate program in January 2019,” said Kim Litwack, dean at UWM’s 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.”

Family nurse practitioners are independently licensed advanced practice nurses, whose scope of clinical services includes primary care for adults and children of all ages. This program is for nurse practitioners who have been practicing 18 months or less and are seeking a specialty in psychiatry and mental health.

Students can apply request application details by contacting Medical College of Wisconsin recruiter Gabrielle Pollard at gpollard@mcw.edu.