1025-17: "The medicine isn’t working, now what?”  Seeing Children through a Holistic Lens. How to Reconceptualize Difficult Cases in Children and Adolescents with Complex Behavioral Health Problems

Psychiatric APRNs often struggle when children don’t respond to evidence based treatment. This session will re-conceptualize, using a more holistic approach, the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of complex symptoms in children and adolescents. Evidence based screening tools, psychopharmacology and psychotherapeutic modalities will be reviewed via a case study method.

Presenters:  Joy A. Lauerer, DNP, PMHCNS-BC; Kathy Gaffney, MSN, PMHCNS, PNP- BC, PMHS-BC

Disclosures:  The presenters and planners have no conflict of interest or commercial support to disclose.  Off-label uses will not be discussed during this presentation.

Session Length:  1 Hour 47 minutes

Target Audience:  RN, APRN

Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this presentation, the participant will be able to:

1. Discuss how to diagnose and treat children and adolescents who have complex behavioral health symptoms with increased sensitivity and accuracy.
2. Describe how family stressors, the history of maltreatment and critical development stages influence the presentation of symptoms in children and adolescents.
3. Examine the role of psychotropic medication and psychotherapy in the treatment of children and adolescents with complex symptoms using unfolding case presentations.

Keywords:  Child and Adolescent, Bi-polar, Childhood Disorders, ADHD

Continuing Nursing Education:
1.75 contact hours.  * In order to receive contact hours, you must: Listen to presentation, complete an evaluation, and earn a passing score on the post-test before the expiration date. You will have 5 tries to correctly answer the questions on the post-test and a score of 80% is required to pass. Once you have passed and completed an evaluation, the certificate will be generated online, available for you to print immediately. You cannot earn credit unless all steps are completed.

The American Psychiatric Nurses Association is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

Originally Presented
APNA 31st Annual Conference
Phoenix, Arizona
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
10:15am - 12:15pm

The contact hours for this session expire:  January 1, 2021