UB to Offer 3 New Advanced Nursing Certificate Programs

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo School of Nursing will offer three new advanced certificate programs beginning this summer and fall.

The programs, offered in response to needs expressed by the local health-care community, will provide training as psychiatric mental-health nurse practitioner or acute-care nurse practitioner. Open to nurses who hold master's degrees as nurse practitioners, the programs will begin in Fall 2000.

UB also will offer a post-baccalaureate program in patient-case management, which will be conducted on campus for the first time this summer and then offered through the Internet.

Certification as a psychiatric mental-health nurse practitioner qualifies nurses to conduct psychiatric assessments and prescribe medication.

"This community has an acute shortage of mental-health professionals, especially in the schools," said Mecca Cranley, dean of the nursing school. "There is a need for practitioners knowledgeable about the biological basis for mental illness, rather than the traditional counselor."

Cranley said hospitals have expressed a need for critical-care nurse practitioners because resident physicians who historically performed this work now are doing much of their training outside of the hospital. Because of the need for specialists in this relatively new nursing field, UB is considering offering it as a full master's degree program, Cranley said.

The post-baccalaureate certification program in case management will train nurses to monitor health-care usage for insurance companies; to work in senior-living communities coordinating health services and prescriptions for seniors seeing multiple physicians, or to work in hospitals monitoring charts to make sure tests and other procedures are performed as directed.