The American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA) is the largest independent organization dedicated to the specialty practice of psychiatric-mental health (PMH) nursing, wellness promotion, prevention and treatment of psychiatric disorders. The organization’s mission is to provide the professional advancement for PMH nurses and create a community that foster mental health care and the promotion of evidence based advances in assessment and treatment through collaboration with consumer groups (American Psychiatric Nurses Association, n.d.-a). APNA has five types of memberships and dues, which include regular and affiliate membership for mental health professionals besides registered nurses. Furthermore, international membership for nurses residing outside of the Unites States, retired membership, and student membership for full-time students enrolled in a nursing degree program (American Psychiatric Nurses Association, n.d.-c). In addition, APNA has no information on licensing and is not a certification agency, thus PMH nursing certification is conducted by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (American Psychiatric Nurses Association, n.d.-b). …show more content…
The APNA Annual Conference is a three day program geared toward topics in psychiatric-mental health nursing. Moreover, in the APNA Annual Clinical Psychopharmacology Institute PMH nurses are educated on drug therapies, research and education on psychiatric medications. Finally, the APNA eLearning center is an online component that provides PMH nurses access to speakers and content experts, webinars, podcasts, and publications that cover skills for PMH nursing, psychopharmacology, and smoking cessation (American Psychiatric Nurses Association,