Family (Individual Across the Lifespan) Nurse Practitioner Program Overview

Amanda Schoening:

Hello and good day. Thank you for joining Duquesne University’s Online Nursing Program webinar. My name is Amanda Schoening. I’m one of the enrollment advisors here with our school of nursing. I’m also here with my colleague, Jamella Lewis.

Jamella Lewis:

Hello everyone. This is Jamella, one of the enrollment advisors with Duquesne University’s Online Nursing Programs. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about our Family Nurse Practitioner programs, the MSN, and the Post-Master’s Certificate in Family Nurse Practitioner.

Amanda Schoening:

Joining us today, we have Professor Laura Crimm, who’s going to take a moment now to just tell us a little bit more about her background and her career as a nurse and as a nurse practitioner. Professor Crimm?

Professor Laura Crimm:

Good morning everybody. It’s nice to talk with you. Yes, I have been a Family Nurse Practitioner since 1997 and I absolutely love it and I’m excited to hear that you’re interested to learn more about our program. I have worked in family practice, internal medicine, retail medicine, occupational medicine, and geriatric and palliative care. So I enjoy sharing a lot of my expertise with my students so that they can learn about all these different opportunities that are available to them after graduation.

Amanda Schoening:

Excellent, excellent. So to kind of kick things off regarding the Family Nurse Practitioner program, at the MSN level, we’re looking at about just a little over two and a half to three years to complete. The program itself is 42 credit hours and involves 12 courses. Now, Professor Crimm, could you just tell us a little bit more about what is a Family Nurse Practitioner and what sort of nurse makes the best type of Family Nurse Practitioner?

Professor Laura Crimm:

Well, a Family Nurse Practitioner is somebody that is going to take care of patients in the community setting, like in the outpatient community. So you’re going to be managing the primary care aspects of people’s health. You’re going to be managing and trying to prevent many of the complications that our nurses deal with when they work with patients in the hospital. So we’re trying to get optimal control of people’s diabetes, of their blood pressure, their cholesterol levels. There is a great deal of education that’s involved in addition to diagnosing and treating patients. I think what I liked best about the Family Nurse Practitioner role is there are just so many opportunities in the community setting that you can work. And just as I spoke about the different things that I’ve done throughout my career, I have to say my favorite is family practice itself where you get to know the family, you know the mom, the dad, you know the kids. And they’ll come in and they’ll share with you their prom pictures, their graduation pictures, their first grandchildren. And you become a part of those families.

Professor Laura Crimm:

And I think that that’s a very, very rewarding part of this career. And I think for nursing, the nurse that this is the right field for is somebody that’s interested. They’ve worked in acute care and they want to be that person that is preventing patients from getting to that point where they were taken care of in the ICU. It’s that person that has that driving interest to prevent these diseases before we see the complications that we do when they’re in the hospital setting.

Jamella Lewis:

Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Professor Crimm. And from your experience and just from your years at Duquesne, what do you thinks that’s Duquesne’s FNP program apart from some of the other ones that you’ll find online?

Professor Laura Crimm:

I think Duquesne in and of itself is different than many of the programs out there. I was fortunate enough to get my undergraduate degree from Duquesne, so I can speak to it as a student as well as a professor. Duquesne, you’re not a number. Duquesne, you’re actually a person and there’s a very nurturing, it’s a funny way to say it, but I say it’s warm and fuzzy here. The faculty really care. They know their students, they know who the students are. The students know. My students will just reach out after graduation. And if they have a question about something in their career or they have a question about something that they’ve come across, they just still email me because there’s that kind of relationship that’s formed. And I think that’s something that really sets Duquesne aside from some of the other programs.

Professor Laura Crimm:

In addition, we also have on campus residencies that not all programs have. And I think that that’s also very important because it gives our students an opportunity to feel like a part of the university because they’re on the campus. They get to meet and form bonds with each other because sometimes that’s difficult to do and you can feel very isolated in an online environment. But these bonds form while they’re on campus, they get to actually meet their professors in person and form relationships with them there as well. So I think there’s a lot of things that set Duquesne apart just for those reasons.

Amanda Schoening:

Absolutely. I would absolutely agree with that. Now, what can students expect to learn in the program? What are some major focuses that we address throughout the FNP track?

Professor Laura Crimm:

One of the things that we always tell the students is that we want them to be the nurse practitioner that not only knows what to do, but they understand why they’re doing it. So we have a very strong focus on the three, we call them the three Ps. So it’s pathophysiology, pharmacology, and physical assessment because you need to have a strong understanding of those and to be able to synthesize that information and apply it as you move into the management courses. So we will often revisit that in every single course. So for the students that I teach the last two adult courses before graduation, and I always have my students not only looking at what’s going on with the person, but they understand the pathophysiology behind these diseases and then they understand why they’re prescribing and choosing certain medications based upon all of these other decisions. It’s the big picture.

Professor Laura Crimm:

So you will learn in this program about all the common diseases that we treat in primary care. So it’s not just hypertension and diabetes and hypothyroidism, but it’s going to also be things like strep pharyngitis. It’s going to be things like gastroesophageal reflux disease. It’s going to be managing people after they’ve had a stroke. It’s looking at the older adult and everything that encompasses their health as they reach these ages, how metabolisms change, how we need to be considerate of that when we’re prescribing. So we take every facet of their development, but we always intertwine and interweave the three Ps into them as well. So they’ll go through pediatrics, they’ll go through women’s health, they’ll go the whole way across all lifespans with clinical experiences.

Jamella Lewis:

Thank you, Professor Crimm. Speaking of clinicals, one of the main questions that we get a lot is are students able to work full time and do their clinicals coming down to their last year in the program? What advice would you have for a student who is trying to figure out if they would have to adjust their schedule at some point or from what you’ve seen?

Professor Laura Crimm:

I think the best thing that we will tell students, and I have this conversation often, is students need to really assess their own personal situation. A lot of my students will go to PRN or part time weekend programs as they get further along in the program because there are so many clinical hours and the courses are rigorous because they’re becoming primary care providers so we can’t … I’m trying to think of it. We don’t teach you half of the diabetes. We teach you the whole thing because you’re going to have to manage it the same way as a physician or a physician assistant is going to do after graduation. So there’s a lot of intensity and rigor with the coursework. But sometimes when they have 200 and 225 clinical hours to do in addition, that students will find that it’s easier to work on the .. You just do a weekend program. Other students will say, “I have to work full time,” but then they make sacrifices or adjustments in their time with other things. So maybe they don’t do as many personal activities because they’ve got to allow or structure in that time for the program. Does that help to explain it?

Amanda Schoening:

Absolutely. And kind of a follow up question to that is one again that we get pretty frequently. And I guess it’s two part. Where are students looking to do clinicals? And can they do their clinicals and can they precept at their place of employment?

Professor Laura Crimm:

Okay. I’ll start with the first one. So when you’re in the Family Nurse Practitioner program, we want you to get your clinical experiences and need them to be in an outpatient family practice or outpatient specialty office. And the reason why is we’re preparing them for the Family Nurse Practitioner certification board, which is going to be based on everything in family practice. Everything that we teach them is for community based nurse practitioners. So we can’t approve time in a hospital because it’s not applicable to what they’re being trained for. It’s not going to reinforce what they’re learning in the course. So everything needs to be in an outpatient setting. Many of the students will choose family practice offices, they’ll choose federally qualified healthcare centers, pediatric offices for their pediatric rotations. If they’re interested in specialty, a lot of students will choose to do an outpatient dermatology setting, go learn more about that, or perhaps an outpatient cardiology office. But anything that they do must be outpatient wise. We don’t approve for inpatient.

Professor Laura Crimm:

And then the other question was could they do it at their place of employment? We don’t want that. They can’t be having clinicals on the units that they work. And as I said, they have to be outpatient anyway. But if they worked in an outpatient facility, they couldn’t do it there because it puts them in a difficult situation to begin with because you are a nurse when you’re there and you’re working, so you can’t be doing clinical as a nurse practitioner where you’re a nurse because the lines get muddied and crossed and you don’t get the experience that you need to have. Now if the organization, if their office that they’re going to do clinical is owned by the company that owns their own office, as long as it’s not the same site and the people that they’re going to do their clinical with aren’t somebody that they work for, then they can do that. Is that clear? Because it can get a little muddy.

Jamella Lewis:

Yes. That was actually very clear. And it’ll also help us as well when we’re explaining it to potential students regarding clinical hours and their place of employment. Now I do know with the Family Nurse Practitioner program, there are two campus residencies, one associated with that physical assessment course and then the foundations of family care course. Can you tell us a little bit about what students can expect while they’re on campus?

Professor Laura Crimm:

Absolutely. So when they have the physical assessment course, the advanced physical assessment course, this is really a time to bring them to campus where they get to become comfortable with a lot of the equipment that we use as a provider that you don’t use as a nurse. They learn advanced physical assessment skills and then they practice and demonstrate it on each other. They also learn more information about coding and billing. But the primary focus of this is learning about how to take a history and it’s about learning how to perform a physical exam at the advanced practice nurse level.

Professor Laura Crimm:

And then the next campus week, the one that you spoke of for the foundations course that brings back students and then we do a little bit more. At this campus, they learn about suturing, they learn about interpreting x-rays, they learn about minor office procedures, and they have hands on experience doing these things. We have information that we talk to them about telehealth. I’m trying to think of some of these other things that we do with it. We have advanced EKG interpretation, so we take them to that next level. Things that we’ve done as a nurse that now you’re not relying upon somebody else’s diagnosis of something. You actually have to be the one diagnosing it. So if somebody comes up to you and hands you an EKG, you need to be able to say, “Yes, that person could be treated here,” or “No, we need to get that person to the hospital because this is something emergent.” And we help to bring them up to that level so that they can understand that.

Amanda Schoening:

Excellent. I think that’s really beneficial to students, especially coming from more of an online education background to really get those hands on supervised hours with our faculty.

Professor Laura Crimm:

Absolutely.

Amanda Schoening:

Definitely appreciate-

Professor Laura Crimm:

And I can speak as when I went through my nurse practitioner program many, many years ago, we did not have experience with suturing. We did not have the experience of interpreting x-rays or advanced EKG interpretation. And a lot of that stuff then we had to learn as we became nurse practitioners in the field. And we want to give that gift to our students that they get some of this while they’re here in a safe environment and they’re at least familiar with it before they’re starting that new career.

Amanda Schoening:

Absolutely, and that definitely prevents a lot of stress right out of the gate with the new career as well. Because once you get into that immediate first setting with that patient, you already are familiar with that type of care.

Professor Laura Crimm:

Absolutely.

Amanda Schoening:

Definitely a great benefit. I agree. So now I think we look to move on to the application process and what sort of requirements we have of the program. So in order to be qualified for admission into the Family Nurse Practitioner program, students must hold the Bachelor’s of Science and Nursing from an accredited college or university. We want students to have at least one year of full time work experience as a Registered Nurse prior to registering in clinical or specialty coursework. Additionally, we also like to see that our students have taken a statistics course and passed it with a C or higher prior to beginning the application process. And we also require that students have an unencumbered RN license in order to apply as well.

Amanda Schoening:

Now in terms of application, the process itself, we do require that students fill out an online application. We ask that students send us their official transcripts from their previously attended universities and colleges. We also ask for two letters of recommendation. Now ideally, we want one to be academic and one to be professional, and that would be submitted through an online form through our application portal, which makes it a little bit easier on everyone involved as well. Finally, we would need a copy of the RN license and then we would also need a goal statement from our students. And goal statements here essentially are a way for students to kind of set themselves apart from their resume and their transcripts and really kind of speak to the admissions committee in terms of their experience. It’s going to be about two pages, double spaced. We want to learn a little bit more about you, what led you to nursing in the first place, what you’ve accomplished in your career thus far, why you’re interested in becoming an FNP, and what you’re looking to do in your future career as well. Is there anything really that you could add to that, Professor Crimm, in terms of what would make a strong applicant?

Professor Laura Crimm:

I think that it’s really important to … A lot of times, nurses don’t give themselves kudos. Things that the applicants are doing, they may be chairing a committee on infectious disease if they’re on their unit or things that they’re involved in. Those are things that they want to list. And then I always think that it’s important for them to explain why they want to be a Family Nurse Practitioner, what they think they can bring to the profession, and why Duquesne? What made Duquesne stand out to them from other places? We want to see why you think that you would be a good fit. What about Duquesne’s mission fits with them? But I think that would help to strengthen their application.

Amanda Schoening:

Absolutely. I certainly agree. And I do think just from more of an enrollment standpoint as well, usually that’s where we see the stronger applications. A lot of that does lean towards the quality of the goal statement and the quality of students from a more holistic perspective as well. We really look for students that are a good fit with us as well as us being a good fit for them. So I think that’s pretty much it for the MSN, so I believe our next step will be to move on to the Post-Master Certificate here. Jamella, would you like to tell us a little bit more about that?

Jamella Lewis:

Absolutely. We also offer the Post-Master Certificate Family Nurse Practitioner program for nurses who already have their BSN degree and an MSN degree as well, and are looking to make that transition to becoming a nurse practitioner. That program is less than two and a half years to complete. It is a total of 33 credit hours. And Professor Crimm, can you just tell us a little bit about what is the difference between that Post-Master’s Certificate and the MSN and FNP that we previously talked about?

Professor Laura Crimm:

I think one of the differences that you can point out right away is when the applicants are coming into the program, they’re going to enter their clinical courses much quicker than a student that’s just entered the MSN program because they’re already coming with an MSN. They’re getting their Post-Master’s Certificate, so typically what they’ll do is they’ll take one of our core that’s specific to Duquesne and then their three Ps, patho, pharmacology, and physical assessment if they have not had them or if they did not have them in a recent timestamp. Because most boards of nursing want to see that you’ve had that pharmacology at least within Pennsylvania’s five years, I believe West Virginia is two years. So the applicant needs to be aware of that whenever they’re applying because it may be in their best interest, even if they’ve had pharmacology, if their board of nursing in where they’re going to practice is going to require one within two years, they probably want to repeat pharmacology.

Professor Laura Crimm:

And then they’ll go right into the management course that’s specific to the Family Nurse Practitioner. I also recommend that students that are thinking about a Post-Master’s Certificate be thinking about where they would want to do their clinicals at just because you do move so much more quickly into the management courses where you have to have a clinical preceptor. It’s always good to at least have a plan so that you know. And we have a wonderful clinical coordinator here that helps students as well. But it always helps when a student comes in with a plan. It just makes their life less stressful.

Amanda Schoening:

I would definitely agree with that. And oftentimes, students will ask us, “What can I do with this Post-Master Certificate?” And really, I feel the best way to kind of speak to it is that it’s an addition to your previous graduate studies to help you move into a new field of nursing. Is that something you would agree with?

Professor Laura Crimm:

Yes. And you’ll see with many different states going to full practice authority for nurse practitioners, you need to practice within the specialty that you were prepared. So if you are a women’s health nurse practitioner but you want to work in family practice, then you’re not going to be able to do that in these states that obtain full practice authority as they’re trying to get people to focus just on the specialty that they’ve been prepared. So that would be somebody that would then move into a Family Nurse Practitioner role and then they could move into working in family practice. The same thing goes the other way for our students that if they’re a Family Nurse Practitioner and want to work in the hospital, they’re most likely going to need to have a Post-Master’s Certificate as an acute care nurse practitioner for that same reason.

Amanda Schoening:

Absolutely. And then with this program, I assume that in terms of what students can expect to learn, it’s going to be very similar to what we covered with the MSN. It’s the same curriculum aside from some more of the core nursing courses, right?

Professor Laura Crimm:

Absolutely. It’s exactly the same. They’re in the same courses with the MSN students. These students, they have relationships, whether it’s not just an MSN student having relationships with an MSN student, they’re one group. They’re one group going through this together.

Amanda Schoening:

Okay. And then when it comes to the clinical hours associated with this certificate in particular and the residencies as well, we have the same two residencies, same clinical hour requirement. Now we do get questions occasionally from students that might have their Master’s as a women’s health nurse practitioner or a pediatric nurse practitioner. Are you able to transfer in clinical hours from your MSN towards your Post-Master’s Certificate? Or do we want our students to do the full 700 hours with the FMP certificate?

Professor Laura Crimm:

That we would have to look at on an individual basis.

Amanda Schoening:

Okay. That’s certainly understandable. And then same thing with the residencies, physical assessment, foundations of family care focuses mostly on those advanced practice skill sets. So when looking at students that are solid candidates for this program, are we looking more so at students that already have an advanced practice background? Are we looking for students with all sorts of nursing backgrounds? Who makes a really good applicant for this program?

Professor Laura Crimm:

Let me answer one other thing first. I know that a question that I see a lot that comes through about students that are Post-Master, they ask about transferring their role course or their transitions course or the advanced practice course. That we don’t accept because the role course is going to be specific to them being a nurse practitioner. So it’s our 512 course, but it’s the one that it doesn’t transfer in. So just if you get questions on that. And then your next question was about … I was going to say with the campus weeks, if for any reason a student would transfer in their physical assessments from another university, they would not have to come to that campus week.

Amanda Schoening:

Okay. That’s very good to know.

Jamella Lewis:

Thank you for explaining that, Professor Crimm.

Professor Laura Crimm:

Oh, you’re welcome.

Jamella Lewis:

So the admission requirements for the post certificate Family Nurse Practitioner program, students do have to hold a BFN and MSN from an accredited college or university and meet the 3.0 minimum GPA requirements. We also require students to have their unencumbered RN license as well as complete an undergraduate level statistics course with a C or higher. The application process is similar to our Family Nurse Practitioner program. We do need your resume or your CV, a professional goal statement that’s typically two pages typed double spaced. And then two letter of recommendations and these will include one academic and one from your direct supervisor. And of course, we will need your official transcripts from all schools attended.

Professor Laura Crimm:

And you had also mentioned earlier what makes a good … Does it just have to be an advanced practice nurse that applies to the program? I think that a student that has her Master’s as an advanced practice nurse educator or we’ve had forensic nurses with their Master’s come to be a Family Nurse Practitioner. I think you’re bringing whatever your experience is with you. It’s not strictly has to be somebody that is an advanced practice nurse or advanced practice nurse practitioner that’s moving into this role.

Amanda Schoening:

Excellent. Excellent. That’s always good to know too because we do often get students from different backgrounds within nursing and I feel that really helps bring a solid level of diversity to our classroom in terms of previously brought in knowledge from a student that might have education knowledge, forensic nursing knowledge, perhaps even informatics knowledge to kind really blend together in discussion posts, campuses, anything where students are interacting with each other. So that’s always very good to know. Now, I believe that is all we have for the Family Nurse Practitioner programs at this time. If you’re interested in becoming an FNP or pursuing your FNP here with us at Duquesne, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. You can reach out to Jamella or myself or your designated enrollment advisor. The office number here is (888)-305-5749. And of course, just dial our direct extensions, which can be found in our email. Thank you so much again for your time today, Professor Crimm. We do truly appreciate it and all of your insight into this program.

Professor Laura Crimm:

Thank you very much as well. Have a nice day.

Amanda Schoening:

You too.