PRAC 6635: Psychopathology and Diagnostic Reasoning Practicum Assignment

PRAC 6635: Psychopathology and Diagnostic Reasoning Practicum Assignment

PRAC 6635: Psychopathology and Diagnostic Reasoning Practicum Assignment

Syllabus

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Student Support and Calendar Information

So you have all key information available to you off-line, it is highly recommended that you print the following items for your reference:

This Syllabus, including the Course Schedule that is linked on this page as a PDF
Course Calendar
Support, Guidelines, and Policies

Credit Hours

2 credits in 11 weeks

Walden University assigns credit hours based on the number and type of assignments that enable students to achieve the course learning objectives. In general, each semester credit equals about 42 hours of total student work and each quarter credit equals about 28 hours of total student work. This time requirement represents an approximate average for undergraduate work and the minimum expectations for graduate work. The number and kind of activities estimated to fulfill time requirements will vary by degree level and student learning style, and by student familiarity with the delivery method and course content.

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Course Description

Advanced practice psychiatric-mental health nurses need to have the knowledge and ability to provide safe, competent, and comprehensive mental health assessments to patients in mental health settings across the lifespan. Students in this course apply assessment skills to include psychiatric interviewing, history taking, and examination to gather patient data to inform diagnosis. They also apply knowledge of psychopathology and diagnostic reasoning in clinical settings for health promotion, psychiatric assessment, and to develop differential diagnosis for patients with psychiatric and substance use disorders across the lifespan. Students synthesize their knowledge from previous coursework and professional experiences to develop advanced communication and documentation skills. Note: Students with catalog years before Spring 2018 must complete a minimum of 144 practicum hours; those with catalog years beginning Spring 2018 must complete a minimum of 160 practicum hours. A minimum of 80 patient encounters are required. No student may complete their practicum hours sooner than 8 weeks.

*Students must be able to see patients across the lifespan. If the primary preceptor only sees adult clients, a secondary preceptor will be needed in order to complete the requirements for children and adolescent experiences. Sometimes this can be another provider in the same office as the primary preceptor. See your student practicum manual.

A minimum of 80 patient encounters are required. Of those minimum 80 encounters, at least 5 patient encounters must be with age populations of children and/or adolescents and at least 5 patient encounters must be with age populations of adults and/or older adults.
PRAC 6635: Psychopathology and Diagnostic Reasoning Course Specific Requirements

Types of Patients: Patients receiving care for psychiatric and substance use disorders across the life span to include children, adolescents, adults, and older adults.*
Types of Services: Assessment and diagnosis of children, adolescents, adults, and older adults with acute and chronic psychiatric and substance use disorders.
Possible Preceptor Choices: PMHNP or Board Certified Psychiatrist.
Possible Site Choices: Private practice, community psychiatric and/or counseling center, crisis centers, drug/alcohol rehabilitation center, college counseling center, employee assistance program (EAP) sites, or assisted living/Alzheimer’s facility, hospital or specialty care facility, jails/prison, or any other site where psychiatric assessment and diagnosing takes place (to be determined on an individual basis).
Nonacceptable Sites: Any form of community and/or home visits.
Nonacceptable Preceptors: FNP, AGACNP, AGPCNP, PMHCNS, or any other NP other than a board-certified psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner. No PAs. No psychotherapists, psychologists, or MSWs.
Any schedule for more than 8 hours per day must be verified through preceptor email to faculty as preceptor working a condensed schedule AND approved by faculty.

Course Prerequisites

NURS 6630: Psychopharmacological Approaches to Treatment of Psychopathology
NRNP 6635: Psychopathology and Diagnostic Reasoning*

*This course is ideally taken concurrently, as a corequisite, but may also be taken as a prerequisite if needed.
Course Learning Outcomes

By the conclusion of this course, you should be able to:

Assess psychiatric-mental health advanced practice nursing skills for strengths and opportunities
Develop professional plans in advanced nursing practice for the practicum experience
Apply advanced practice nursing assessment and diagnosis skills in mental health settings
Analyze cases involving advanced care of patients across the lifespan in mental health settings
Formulate differential diagnoses for patients across the lifespan

College of Nursing Alignment of Learner Outcomes

Click on the following link to access the Alignment of Learner Outcomes:

Document: PRAC 6635 Alignment of Learning Outcomes (PDF)

Course Materials

Please visit the university bookstore via your Walden student portal to ensure you are obtaining the correct version of any course texts and/or materials noted in the following section. When you receive your materials, make sure that all required items are included.
Course Text

Required texts:

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://go.openathens.net/redirector/waldenu.edu?url=https://dsm.psychiatryonline.org/doi/book/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787

Note: This required text is available for purchase. It is also accessible through the Walden Library.

Carlat, D. J. (2017). The psychiatric interview (4th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.

Sadock, B. J., Sadock, V. A., & Ruiz, P. (2015). Kaplan and Sadock’s synopsis of

psychiatry: Behavioral sciences/clinical psychiatry (11th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.

Recommended text:

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Author.

Note: If the print edition of these books are referenced here, electronic versions also may be available and may be acceptable for use in this course. If an electronic version is listed, no print version is available.

Other readings (journal articles, websites, book excerpts, etc.) are assigned throughout the course and may be found within each Module.
Media

Assigned course media elements may be found in one or more modules of the course and are available via a streaming media player or a hyperlink to the individual item.
Primary and Secondary Sources

Review the following information prior to selecting resources for assignments.

Primary: A primary source is an original document that is the first account of what happened. A research report is primary, and you can tell because it includes materials and methods demonstrating how the research was done. Some creative work is also primary, such as poetry, novels, and interviews of people who experienced something firsthand. In nursing, which is an evidence-based discipline, we strive to use primary research that is published in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals.

Scholarly, peer-reviewed journal: Scholarly journals publish papers by professional authors and experts in the field using a peer-review process to review the work and assure quality before publishing. The focus of a scholarly journal is to provide accurate information for scholars and other researchers. The focus is on content rather than advertising, a direct contrast to popular media. Scholarly journals publish both primary and secondary papers, the former usually noted as original research and the latter as reviews and commentaries. Letters to the editor may also be published but should be recognized as opinion pieces.

Note: When selecting articles for course assignments, you are advised (unless you are referencing seminal information) to focus on work published within the past five years.

Secondary: A secondary source is one step removed from the original source. This work interprets and often compiles other work, and it includes review articles, textbooks, fact sheets, and commentaries about a topic. It also includes news reports of original research. Secondary work is more prone to error and bias than primary work because it is being filtered through an additional person or persons. Review papers can be useful to glean information about a topic and to find other sources from the reference list, but it is the original, primary research that should be relied on most heavily in demonstrating scholarship, depth, and validation of factual information.
Course Assignments

Assignments: The Assignments provide you with the opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge gained through the Learning Resources and at your practicum site. See specific weeks for detailed descriptions of the assignments. In grading some of the required Assignments, your Instructor will be using rubrics located in the Course Information area.

Note: The course Assignments will require that you completely and accurately demonstrate critical thinking via assimilation and synthesis of ideas when using credible outside and course-specific resources (i.e., video, required readings, textbook), when comparing different points of view, highlighting similarities, differences, and connections, and/or when lending support to your Assignment responses.

This Practicum course contains several different types of Assignments:

Self-Assessment and Journal

A student self-assessment and a reflective journal occur at the beginning and end of the course as a means to consider strengths, opportunities for improvement, guiding goals, and growth.

Clinical Hour and Patient Logs

Students may start logging practicum hours within each course on the second day of the course provided that they have received a practicum approval from the Office of Field Experience and their practicum instructor approves.

Students are required to keep a log of the time spent related to their practicum experience and enter every patient they see each day. Students can access their logs from the Welcome Page in their Meditrek account. Students will track time individually for each patient they work with. Students are required to continuously input their hours throughout the term. You must log hours spent and patient encounters within 48 hours of being in the practicum setting during your weekly modules of 7 days. Your patient logs must be completed as final submission within the 48-hour time frame requirement and may not be edited after the 48 hour time requirement, or they will be considered late. Logs are reviewed and evaluated by instructors each week to track student progress. Failure to keep clinical hours and patient logs current may hinder success in the class and may result in point deductions from the weekly assignment 10 points. Please print and keep your completed patient log at the end of your clinical experiences for future use as a component of your portfolio.

Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation and Patient Case Presentations

In the Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation and Patient Case Presentation assignments, students complete documentation on a patient from their practicum. They then record themselves presenting an analysis of the case. Videos should be created in Kaltura, support for which may be found in the Blackboard classroom.

Note: An 8-hour scheduled Practicum day does not mean all 8 hours may be eligible for documented hours in Meditrek! Please review the approved practicum activities and unapproved practicum activities below.

The following activities count toward the required practicum hours:

Direct patient care
Shadowing the preceptor (maximum of 8 hours per quarter); shadowing is defined as the hours spent orienting to the facility policies, procedures, and staff with no direct patient care.
Attendance at rounds or meetings that specifically discuss patient care and coordination (multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary teams).
Documentation in the patient’s medical record

The following activities are not included as practicum hours:

Travel time to and from practicum activities
Continuing education offerings or staff meetings
Extensive chart review
Requirements such as orientation or required training mandated by health care agencies
Communication (e.g., emails, phone calls), unless conferencing about patients
Assignments related to the didactic portion of the course
Meal breaks
Preceptor directed reading, research, or assignments
Entering patient encounters or time logs into Meditrek®
Downtime when students are sitting waiting to assess patients, and/or no-show patient appointment times unless spent conducting appropriate practicum activities listed above.

Academic Integrity Originality Policy

Walden encourages students to use critical thinking to produce original thoughts in discussion posts, assignments, and other scholarly work. This “…will require that you completely and accurately demonstrate critical thinking via assimilation and synthesis of ideas when using credible, outside and course specific resources (i.e., video, required readings, textbook); when comparing different points of view, highlighting similarities, differences, and connections; and/or when lending support to your responses.” Using too many direct quotes or ineffective paraphrasing does not demonstrate originality.

To demonstrate originality requires the use of paraphrasing. According to the Walden Writing Center (n.d.), “Paraphrasing in academic writing is an effective way to restate, condense, or clarify another author’s ideas while also providing credibility to your own argument or analysis” (“Introduction to Paraphrasing”). “As you discuss those sources, paraphrasing allows you to use your own words and sentence structure to talk about the information you gleaned from those sources.” (Walden Writing Center, n.d., “Introduction to Paraphrasing”).

“Ineffective paraphrasing occurs when authors paraphrase a source but do not use their own sentence structure or vocabulary to effectively reword that source. The issue here is often that the student’s paraphrase simply uses synonyms for the source’s original wording and is not different enough from the original source’s wording. Ineffective paraphrasing can occur when an author does not use his or her own wording or voice to paraphrase entire paragraphs or individual sentences.” (Walden Writing Center, n.d., “Examples of Paraphrasing,” slide 10).

For more information, refer to the Writing Center’s Introduction to Plagiarism & Intellectual Property at https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/modules/plagiarism#s-lg-box-8548804

Assignments, discussion posts, or other scholarly work that does not demonstrate originality and/or lacks proper citation to credit original sources/authors will receive a grade reduction amounting up to 10%.
Grading Criteria and Total Components of a Grade

Course grades will be based on participation (postings) and completion of assignments listed below.

Letter grades will be assigned as follows:

90%–100% = A
80%–89% = B
70%–79% = C
< 70% = F

Please see below for the policy on Incomplete (I) grades.

Assignment Total Points Percentage
(Weighted)
Practicum Site Information Form

S/U

0%
Practicum Application Assignment S/U 0%
Self-Assessment (100 pts.)
Practicum Experience Plan (100 pts.)
Journal (100 pts.)

300

12%
Weeks 1–10 Clinical Hour and Patient Logs (10 pts. x 10)

100

10%

Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation

and Patient Case Presentations (100 pts. x 3)

300

28%

Midterm Evaluation (100 pts.)

Final Clinical Evaluation (100 pts.)

200

50%
Total 900 100%

Dismissal from your clinical site for any academic concern or unprofessional behavior will result in failure of this practicum course.

Incomplete Grade Policy

Per university policy, Incomplete grades can be granted only to students who have already met the minimum criteria for active weekly participation in a course (including weekly postings in online courses) and have completed at least 80% of other coursework and/or less that 50 hours to complete in the practicum setting. Incompletes can be awarded when, because of extenuating circumstances, a student has not met additional course requirements, including but not limited to written assignments, group projects, and research papers, as applicable. All Incomplete grades are awarded at the discretion of the course faculty.

Students who are eligible for an Incomplete must contact the Course Faculty to request the grade as soon as possible. Students who do not meet the criteria listed above will not be allowed to earn an Incomplete. If the Incomplete is approved, the Faculty Member will work with the student to outline the due date(s) for remaining work. Under no circumstances will the new due dates extend beyond 50 days from the last day of the term. Faculty will then have 10 days to assess the work and post the permanent grade before the university-allotted Incomplete time limit of 60 days expires. All Incomplete grades not resolved within the time allotted will convert to permanent grades of F.
Instructor Feedback Schedule

The Instructor will log in to the course during the week to monitor the Discussion area in those weeks when a Discussion is assigned. Feedback will be provided via the My Grades area, the Discussion area, and/or the Announcements page.

You can expect your assignment grades to be posted within 10 calendar days of a due date. Instructor feedback and explanation is provided whenever full credit is not achieved. Depending on the nature of the feedback, Instructor responses may be posted to the Discussion area or included in the My Grades area. The goal of your Instructor is to act as a learning facilitator rather than a lecturer. Please feel free to ask your Instructor if you would like some personal feedback on a particular assignment posting or any time you have any questions regarding your assignments or your grade.
Course Procedures

You are encouraged to post course-related questions to the Contact the Instructor area as they may be of interest to all; however, if your question is urgent, it is often best to email the Instructor. If your emailed question is thought to be of benefit to all, it may be responded to by the Instructor via email to all or posted as an announcement. Include your course number and section in your email or your faculty is not required to respond back to you.
Instructor feedback on content and writing issues that is thought to be of benefit to the entire class may be posted to the Contact the Instructor area; however, most personal critique will be done privately in the Grade Center. Be sure to check the Grade Center for comments every week even if you received full credit.
Please feel free to use the Class Café to initiate and participate in conversations not directly related to the course. This is an excellent opportunity to get to know other students better or develop study groups. The Instructor will browse the Class Café occasionally but generally will not respond to conversations posted there unless students have specific questions for him or her.
Check the email account you use for official Walden University business on a regular basis. The expectation is that you are checking this email account daily during the week. If you experience difficulty sending or receiving Walden email, please contact the Student Support Team right away. Contact information for the Student Support Team is located in the Student Support area.
Review all materials in the Course Information area, as well as the materials contained under each of the weekly buttons.
Review all information in the MSN College of Nursing Practicum Manual and The College of Nursing Handbook (both may be located on the Walden University Field Experience: Nursing website). Students in this course will be upheld to all the policies and procedures located in these documents.
Resubmission of assignments is not permitted after due dates. Students are expected to review their work and submissions of work carefully prior to due dates. Faculty may open a second submission area for assignment resubmission prior to due dates if students report submission errors. Assignments are graded after due dates as the final product ready for grading. Errors in submissions noted after due dates may result in a grade of zero.

Note: There are Recommended Readings located within the Learning Resources section of each week in the course. You are encouraged to explore these readings, as needed, in order to enhance your understanding of the course content.
Preferred Methods for Delivering Assignments

Clinical Hour and Patient Logs, as well as the Midterm and Final Clinical Evaluations, are completed in Meditrek. The link to Meditrek is provided in the classroom.
Assignments are submitted to the SafeAssign link and named according to the week in which the Assignment is submitted. Directions for naming each Application Assignment are included in each week’s Assignment area. Please be sure that all written Application Assignments are saved and submitted as a “.doc” file.
All email correspondence must contain the subject line “PRAC 6635-XX-NAME” (XX is the section number) followed by a brief description of the subject. This subject line convention ensures that your email will be easily identified and responded to in a timely manner. It is required that the email contain a signature that matches the official name used in the course.
Faculty will not grade assignments (notes/videos/discussions) submitted through email. All assignments must be submitted to the assignment area for grading within the course room.
All Kaltura assignment videos will be submitted through the assignment submission area by students for grading. Faculty will not pull student videos from the “MyMedia” section to grade. This is a course requirement, not a preference.

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Late Assignment Policy

Students are expected to submit assignments by the due dates noted in the course. In extenuating circumstances, such as illness, the student must contact the Instructor as soon as possible to discuss the situation. In those circumstances, Faculty will determine the appropriate course of action for the student. Depending on the situation, these actions may include recommendations to drop the course (if within the university drop/withdrawal period), acceptance of some or all of the overdue assignments with or without penalties, or failure to accept assignments.

Assignments submitted late without the prior agreement of the Instructor, outside of an emergency absence, or in violation of agreements for late submission, will receive a grade reduction for the assignment amounting up to 20%. Each day late with result in a 4%-point deduction up to day 5. After 5 days, the assignment will be graded a zero. Students should be aware that late assignments may not receive the same level of written feedback as do assignments submitted on time.
Discussion Board, Midterm Exam, and Final Exam Late Policy

The late policy applied to discussion boards, midterms exams, and final exams are different than course assignments and are as follows. Students are expected to complete discussion boards, midterms exams, and final exams by the due dates noted in the course. If students do not complete the discussion boards or initiate exams by the due date, the grade will result in a zero. In the event of an extenuating circumstance, students must let the instructor know prior to the due date. If the student is unable to do so, he or she needs to notify the instructor as soon as possible and those circumstances will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Any exam that is permitted to be taken late or permitted a retake may be subject to proctoring with audio and video technology.
Keeping Your Coursework

You will have access to the course and your coursework from the course start date until 60 days after the course ends. After this time, you will no longer be able to access the course or related materials. For this reason, we strongly recommend that you retain copies of your completed assignments and any documents you wish to keep. The university is not responsible for lost or missing coursework.
Course Evaluation

At or near the end of the course, you will receive an email inviting you to submit an online evaluation of the course and instruction. All submitted course evaluations are confidential, and only aggregate data and comments will be shared with the Instructor and Program Director. Your feedback is vitally important to Walden University in its efforts to continuously improve programs.
Students With Disabilities

Students in this course who have a disability that might prevent them from fully demonstrating their abilities should contact the director of Student Wellness & Disability Services at disability@mail.waldenu.edu or at 1-800-925-3368, ext. 312-1205 and +1-612-925-3368 or https://www.waldenu.edu/contact-us for international toll-free numbers as soon as possible to initiate disability verification and discuss accommodations that may be necessary to ensure full participation in the successful completion of course requirements.
Classroom Participation

In accordance with U.S. Department of Education guidance regarding class participation, Walden University requires that all students submit at least one of their required Week 1 assignments (which includes posting to the Discussion Board) within each course(s) during the first 7 calendar days of class. For courses with two-week units, posting to the Discussion Board by Day 7 meets this requirement. The first calendar day of class is the official start date of the course as posted on your myWalden academic page.

Assignments submitted prior to the official start date will not count toward your participation.

Financial Aid cannot be released without class participation as defined above.

Students who are taking their first class with Walden and do not submit at least one of their required Week 1 assignments (or at least one Discussion post) by the end of the 7th day will be administratively withdrawn from the university.

Students who have already taken and successfully completed at least one or more class(es) with Walden, and who do not participate within the first 7 days, will be dropped from that class.

If you have any questions about your assignments, or you are unable to complete your assignments, please contact your Faculty Member.
Checklist

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The module course checklist below outlines the assignments due for the course.

For full assignment details and directions, refer to each module of the course. All assignments are due by 11:59 p.m. Mountain Time (MT) on the day assigned (which is 1:59 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) the next day). The time stamp in the classroom will reflect Eastern Time (ET), regardless of your time zone. As long as your submission time stamp is no later than 1:59 a.m. Eastern Time (ET), you have submitted on time.
To View the Calendar

To view the Course Calendar:

Course Calendar

To View a Printable Course Schedule

For full assignment details and directions, refer to each Module of the course.

Click on the PRAC 6635 Course Schedule (PDF) link to access the Course Schedule.

Document: PRAC 6635 Course Schedule (PDF)

Checklist

Week Assignment Title
Week 1
Competencies of Advanced Nursing Practice
Learning Resources Required Readings
Optional Discussion Forum PMHNP Study Support Lounge
Assignment 1 Practicum Site Information
Assignment 2 Clinical Skills and Procedures Self-Assessment
Assignment 3 Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Week 2 Practicum Experience Plan
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Reminder Orientation Communication
Assignment 1 Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Assignment 2 Practicum Experience Plan (PEP)
Week 3 Mood Disorders
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Week 4 Anxiety Disorders, PTSD, and OCD
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Week 5 Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation and Patient Case Presentation; Midterm Clinical Evaluation
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment 1 Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Assignment 2 Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation and Patient Case Presentation
Assignment 3 Midterm Clinical Evaluation
Week 6 Neurocognitive, Neurodevelopmental, Eating, and Somatic Symptom-Related Disorders
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Week 7 Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation and Patient Case Presentation
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment 1 Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Assignment 2 Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation and Patient Case Presentation
Week 8 Substance-Related Disorders
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Week 9 Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation and Patient Case Presentation
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment 1 Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Assignment 2 Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation and Patient Case Presentatio
Week 10 Final Clinical Evaluation
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment 1 Clinical Hour and Patient Logs
Assignment 2 Final Clinical Evaluation and Student Feedback
Assignment 3 Practicum Application Assignment
Week 11 Journal
Learning Resources Required Readings
Recommended Readings
Assignment Journal Entry
Reminder Retrieve Your Patient Log

Bibliography

The bibliography contains the references for all learning materials in the course. For your convenience, a link has been provided to download and save the bibliography.

To access the Bibliography:

Document: PRAC 6635 Bibliography (PDF)