Drinking from the Firehose
Why Many Integrative Psychiatry Trainings May Feel Overwhelming—Especially Early in Your Psych NP Career
If you’ve ever started an integrative psychiatry training program and felt like you were back in your first year of nursing school, you're not alone. (The amount of new information really does feel like drinking from a firehose.)
In fact, we hear this all the time from psychiatric NPs who are trying to grow their skillset and offer more comprehensive care by joining one fellowship or another.
They’re showing up to learn and instead they’re left wondering:
“Wait, do I need to memorize methylation pathways to help someone sleep better?”
“How am I supposed to use this in a 30-minute follow-up?”
“Is this even in my scope?”
And maybe most importantly:
“If I'm having trouble understanding this, does that mean I’m not ready to offer integrative treatments?”
Our take: you absolutely are ready. You might just need to start on a smaller scale (like drinking from the tap, not the firehose).
There’s a Lot of Good Trainings Out There
The post-graduate education world is brimming with training focused on integrative psychiatry. The biggest problem? None of these programs were built for PMHNPs.
They were built by MDs, for MDs. They speak directly to physicians, with assumptions made about everyone having the same training background. In these programs, it's easy to feel behind or even like you don't belong.
Now Is Not The Time To Tread Water (Figuratively Speaking)
When you’re in your first few years of practice (or even later, if your last chemistry class was a decade ago) diving into complex labs, biochemical pathways, or multi-thousand-dollar protocols can feel like a mismatch.
You’re likely still refining your clinical voice and gaining more confidence in your assessment and treatment competencies. You don’t need to know everything all at once.
At The Integrative Psych NP, we believe in integrative education that feels:
Respectful of your current practice
Aligned with your scope as a PMHNP
Accessible enough to bring into treatment now
Supportive, not overwhelming
We teach what works for 90% of patients before referring out for the 10%.
We help you feel confident having a supplement conversation without needing to run a full panel of functional labs.
We prioritize clinical utility and not just academic knowledge.
And perhaps most importantly - we believe that seeing patients through your nursing lens is the perfect entry point into integrative care.
You don’t have to drink from the firehose to be a good integrative provider. What we mean is, you don't have to jump right into treating gut dysbiosis and ordering $1000 worth of functional labs. You can start with a training program that speaks to your background and foundation in nursing, with science-backed interventions that both you and your patients can get behind.
And yeah, we offer that - our Foundations Course is the perfect fit for a PMHNP looking to get some integrative training without the overwhelm. We can’t wait to see you in our next cohort.
