Family Nurse Practitioner/Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Collaboration in Drug-Seeking Telephone Triage Simulation in an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Curriculum

Background: Many advanced practice nursing programs incorporate interprofessional collaboration into the curriculum. Few combine intraprofessional collaboration between nurse practitioner (NP) students of different population foci. Telephone triage is a skill that is rarely covered in NP education. Description: We describe a simulation program in which family nurse practitioner (FNP) students collaborate with psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) students in a drug-seeking telephone triage scenario. The patient was portrayed by an improvisational actor. Forty-seven FNP students and 14 PMHNP students participated in the scenario. Outcome: Students reported that the telephone triage scenario was useful and that they would be more likely to both collaborate with and refer patients to NPs from the other specialties. Conclusions: With some modifications, combining FNP and PMHNP students in a telephone triage simulation scenario is beneficial to both groups of students.