A Reflection from The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner’s Handbook

There is a difference between knowing about a person and knowing the person.

We can know the diagnosis, the medication list, the hospitalization history, the substance-use history, the risk factors, and the symptoms. All of that matters, and still not know the person.

Knowing the person requires another kind of attention.

• What matters to them?

• What are they afraid of losing?

• What gives them meaning?

• Who do they trust?

• What have they survived?

• What do they hope their life can still become?

Clinical information helps us understand the condition. Relationship helps us understand the person living with it. The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner needs both.

When we know only the diagnosis, treatment can become technically correct but personally disconnected. The chart can tell us a great deal about someone. However, the chart is not the person.

Precision begins with knowing what we are treating.

Presence asks us to know whom we are treating. And healing requires us never to confuse the two.

More to come.

The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner’s Handbook: Healing with Precision, Presence, and Power

If these reflections resonate with your experience in practice, the full handbook explores these themes in depth.

The Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner’s Handbook is now available wherever books are distributed.