Build your own prep

Start here — free. How this self-paced PMHNP transition-to-practice program works, how to build your own study schedule, how automated grading and feedback work, the documentation and evidence standards used in every course, and a free readiness-for-practice exam to see where you stand before you buy.

• Describe the purpose, structure, and access model of the self-paced PMHNP prep program
• Build a realistic personal pacing plan and weekly study schedule
• Explain how automated grading, rubrics, attempts, and immediate feedback work

The essential professional requirements taught through real patient encounters, prescribing decisions, consultation, documentation, telehealth, risk, and workload safety.

• Apply state scope, licensure, and collaboration requirements to in-person and telepsychiatric care.
• Formulate safe prescribing plans incorporating risk assessment, monitoring, and adverse-event management.
• Document clinical reasoning, informed consent, and coding accurately for defensible records.

Diagnose and manage bipolar depression, mania, mixed states, maintenance, reproductive risk, comorbidity, and relapse through longitudinal cases.

• Differentiate bipolar depression, mania, and mixed presentations using longitudinal assessment and collateral.
• Triage mania, agitation, and suicidality for appropriate outpatient, telehealth, or emergency management.
• Select acute and maintenance pharmacotherapy using patient-specific risks, baseline testing, and monitoring.

Work through first-episode psychosis, antipsychotic selection and titration, adverse effects, metabolic care, clozapine, LAIs, and recovery.

• Conduct first-episode psychosis assessments addressing differential diagnosis, safety, and appropriate care settings.
• Select and titrate initial antipsychotics using symptom targets, patient risks, and shared decision-making.
• Evaluate early treatment response, adverse effects, and metabolic risks to guide interventions.

Treat GAD, panic, social anxiety, OCD, trauma-related anxiety, insomnia, benzodiazepine dependence, and refractory illness through patient cases.

• Differentiate anxiety disorders from cardiac, endocrine, medication, stimulant, caffeine, and substance mimics.
• Assess GAD, panic, social anxiety, OCD, trauma symptoms, and insomnia using validated instruments.
• Select evidence-based SSRIs, SNRIs, and disorder-specific psychotherapies through individualized patient case formulations.

Differentials that do not declare themselves, and how to reason under uncertainty.

• Construct one-sentence problem representations integrating symptom chronology, functional impairment, and clinical context.
• Prioritize psychiatric differentials using DSM-5-TR criteria and distinguishing mood, psychotic, and trauma-related presentations.
• Select evidence-based diagnostic workups to evaluate medical mimics of psychiatric illness.

How medications are actually chosen today: by the target symptom cluster and patient factors, not by drug class label. Measurement-based care, titration, partial response, and safe switching.

• Construct target-symptom treatment plans incorporating validated measures, patient factors, and adequate trials.
• Select and titrate antidepressants using bipolar screening and STAR*D-informed sequencing.
• Differentiate partial response, treatment resistance, activation, and medication syndromes to guide interventions.

Symptom-targeted prescribing for psychosis, agitation, mania, and mood instability, with the monitoring and metabolic stewardship that keeps these patients safe long term.

• Select symptom-targeted antipsychotics for psychosis, agitation, and mania using patient-specific risks.
• Differentiate evidence-based pharmacotherapies for bipolar depression, mania, and mixed features.
• Develop monitoring plans addressing metabolic, movement, prolactin, QTc, sedation, and anticholinergic risks.

Structured risk assessment, safety planning, and the documentation that follows.

• Apply C-SSRS and SAFE-T within clinical workflows, recognizing limits of suicide prediction.
• Formulate acute and chronic risk using warning signs, protective factors, and clinical judgment.
• Develop collaborative Stanley-Brown safety plans incorporating lethal means counseling and supportive contacts.

Prescribing controlled substances with stewardship, boundaries, and a paper trail.

• Apply federal and state controlled-substance requirements to prescribing, documentation, and telehealth.
• Evaluate adult ADHD using diagnostic history, rating scales, differential, and cardiac screening.
• Develop individualized stimulant treatment plans incorporating titration, monitoring, and nonstimulant alternatives.

Therapeutic technique inside a 20-minute medication visit.

• Demonstrate alliance-building, culturally responsive interviewing, and interpreter collaboration during medication management visits.
• Apply motivational interviewing skills to explore ambivalence and support shared medication decisions.
• Deliver brief CBT, interpersonal psychotherapy, and behavioral activation interventions within 20-minute visits.

Developmentally-informed assessment, family systems, and pediatric prescribing.

• Design clinically safe panel workflows for visits, refills, authorizations, follow-ups, and result tracking.
• Differentiate pediatric mood, neurodevelopmental, disruptive-behavior, and trauma presentations using developmentally-informed, family-informed assessment.
• Develop measurement-based pediatric prescribing plans incorporating black-box counseling, monitoring schedules, and stepped-care triggers.

Cognition, polypharmacy, and the discipline of taking medications away.

• Conduct geriatric psychiatric assessments integrating sensory function, collateral history, and validated cognitive screening.
• Differentiate delirium, dementia, and depression using clinical findings and targeted diagnostic workups.
• Select evidence-based interventions for late-life mood, anxiety, and dementia-related behavioral symptoms.

Prescribing across pregnancy, postpartum, and lactation with shared decision-making.

• Compare untreated perinatal illness risks with psychotropic exposure across pregnancy, postpartum, and lactation.
• Document shared prescribing decisions incorporating patient preferences, informed consent, and treatment alternatives.
• Select psychotropics using pregnancy safety evidence, relative infant dose, and infant monitoring parameters.

Dual diagnosis, MAT basics, and trauma-responsive practice.

• Develop integrated formulations addressing co-occurring substance use, psychiatric symptoms, and trauma.
• Interpret substance use screens, toxicology results, and withdrawal severity to determine care thresholds.
• Select alcohol use disorder medications using contraindications, laboratory findings, and monitoring requirements.

Manage agitation, acute mania and psychosis, withdrawal, medication emergencies, delirium, eating-disorder instability, violence risk, and post-discharge care.

• Triage agitation, mania, psychosis, delirium, and eating-disorder instability for emergency disposition.
• Differentiate intoxication, withdrawal, and medication emergencies to initiate appropriate stabilization.
• Assess violence, threats, stalking, and weapon access to implement safety interventions.

Complete a defensible adult ADHD evaluation and make patient-specific stimulant, nonstimulant, monitoring, comorbidity, and diversion decisions.

• Conduct defensible adult ADHD evaluations incorporating developmental history, impairment, collateral, and differential diagnosis.
• Interpret cardiovascular findings, pregnancy status, and interactions to determine pretreatment safety.
• Select and titrate stimulants or nonstimulants using patient-specific risks and treatment goals.

Assess personality patterns, chronic suicidality, repeated crises, medication limits, trauma and dissociation, conflict, boundaries, and team treatment.

• Differentiate personality patterns using longitudinal assessment, functional impairment, and differential diagnosis.
• Formulate risk-based treatment plans for chronic suicidality, repeated crises, and trauma-related dissociation.
• Evaluate medication requests using evidence, prescribing limitations, and shared decision-making.

A self-administered readiness review across all eight competency domains.

• Formulate differential diagnoses for complex mood presentations, incorporating substance use and longitudinal findings.
• Develop evidence-based treatment plans addressing nonresponse, perinatal risks, and inherited controlled substance regimens.
• Demonstrate crisis assessment, safety planning, and disposition decisions consistent with state telepsychiatry requirements.