Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Job Description Template

The state license, in your state's title.

No state issues a "PMHNP license."

The license is the state's advanced practice registered nursing license, and the title on it changes at the state line: CRNP in Alabama and Pennsylvania, RNP in Arizona, APN in New Jersey, ARNP in Iowa — and in Washington, ARNP until June 30, 2027, when the statutory title becomes APRN.

States protect these titles: Oregon law bars the use of the nurse practitioner "initials, name, title, designation or abbreviation" until the board licenses the person (ORS 678.375(2)), and Iowa reserves the title and the ARNP letters to a person currently licensed as an advanced registered nurse practitioner (Iowa Admin.

Code 481—621.4(6)).

Write the posting in your state's letters, and verify the license with the state board of nursing rather than from the candidate's paperwork; see hiring compliance: license verification and exclusion checks.

The certification, named exactly.

The prescriber credential is ANCC's PMHNP-BC — Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner-Board Certified (Across the Lifespan) — valid for five years and renewed with 75 continuing-education contact hours, 25 of them in pharmacology, plus a professional-development category.

Do not confuse it with PMH-BC, the similar-sounding RN-level psychiatric-mental-health certification: it carries no prescriptive authority, so a candidate whose highest credential is PMH-BC is not your prescriber.

How to become a PMHNP covers the education and the exam behind the credential.

Prescriptive authority and the physician-agreement line.

This is the most consequential line in the posting: does your state require a physician agreement for this role, and do you provide one?

AANP's state map (updated May 2026) classifies 28 jurisdictions — 27 states plus DC — as full practice, 12 as reduced and 11 as restricted, but that is an advocacy classification; the statute is the rule, and AANP counts 11 full-practice states with a time-in-practice requirement — a set whose gates differ, since AANP itself notes that Nevada's applies only to prescribing Schedule II medications, and Colorado's is a prescribing mentorship.

Several states outside the full-practice list now have an hours-or-years exit from the required agreement, including Illinois (4,000 clinical hours plus 250 CE hours), Kentucky (two 4-year routes: four years of prescribing ends the nonscheduled-drug agreement, and four years of controlled-substance prescribing ends the controlled-substance agreement after a board review), Arkansas (6,240 hours), California (three full-time-equivalent years or 4,600 hours, with wider independent practice after three more years), Florida (3,000 hours toward autonomous registration — limited to primary care, and whether a PMHNP's psychiatric practice qualifies is unresolved), Virginia (3 years, effective July 1, 2024), West Virginia (3 years, prescribing), Oklahoma (6,240 hours, effective November 1, 2025) and Wisconsin (3,840 plus 3,840 hours, effective September 1, 2026).

And agreements persist even where law does not require them: among NPs in full-practice states who work under one, the most common reason given is that the employer requires it — 74.4% in states with transition-to-practice rules and 80.3% in states without (AANP, November 2025, citing Slade et al., 2025).

See full, reduced and restricted practice for the definitions and the state-by-state detail, and who signs collaborative practice agreements and what they cost for the mechanics.

Controlled substances: check Schedule II before you write the requirements.

Five states bar NPs from prescribing Schedule II stimulants — the ADHD medications — in ordinary outpatient practice: Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

The mechanics differ: Texas confines NP Schedule II prescribing to hospital facility-based practice or hospice; Georgia's only exception covers emergency hydrocodone/oxycodone; Missouri's is hydrocodone-only (a 120-hour supply), with other Schedule II drugs available only for hospice patients under an APRN employed by a certified hospice; and Alabama's collaborative controlled-substance certificate covers Schedules III–V only.

Other states add day-supply caps or initiation conditions: Florida caps Schedule II at a 7-day supply except psychiatric medications prescribed by a nurse meeting its statutory "psychiatric nurse" definition; Pennsylvania caps it at a 30-day supply; Kentucky limits Schedule II prescriptions to a 72-hour supply without refill, with a 30-day psychostimulant supply only for an APRN certified in psychiatric-mental health nursing who is providing services in a KRS Chapter 216B health facility or a KRS Chapter 210 regional program — so a private outpatient PMHNP in Kentucky writes 72-hour stimulant prescriptions; and Arkansas allows Schedule II stimulant prescribing only when a physician initiated the prescription, evaluated the patient within the previous six months, and the APRN's prescription treats the same condition — criteria that apply even to NPs holding Arkansas's full independent practice certificate (17 CAR § 123-702(b)(2)).

These are state rules, not a national pattern — check yours, and name any state controlled-substance registration the role requires.

Caseload, setting and telehealth.

Write the medication-management-versus-therapy split into the posting — it defines the visit length, the panel size and the documentation load, and it decides whether you also need therapy staff.

Add the ages served, the EHR, and any on-call or crisis duties.

If the role prescribes controlled substances by telehealth, say so plainly: the DEA/HHS telemedicine flexibilities currently run through December 31, 2026 under the fourth temporary extension (90 FR 61301) — a date-bound rule, not a permanent one — and state telehealth and Schedule II limits stack on top of it.

The telehealth prescribing guide carries the dates and the caveats.

The pay model, with a defensible anchor.

State the structure — salary, salary plus productivity, or fee-for-service — and the range.

Two named anchors, neither PMHNP-perfect: BLS OEWS May 2025 puts the median for SOC 29-1171, nurse practitioners — all NPs, all settings, no psychiatric split — at $132,300 nationally, with the 25th percentile at $117,990 and the 75th at $156,700.

The only named PMHNP-specific source is AANP's 2024 compensation survey, reporting 2023 income: median base salary $135,000 and median total income $140,000 among full-time NPs with a psychiatry/mental-health certification — a paywalled, self-selected survey, not a federal estimate.

Name your anchor in your own modeling, and say how no-shows and documentation time are paid.

Verify the license and the certification separately, at the source.

The state board of nursing lookup is the license check: type and tier, status, expiration, restrictions, and whether prescriptive authority is attached.

Record the date and who checked.

Nursys does not carry APRN data for a set of states — including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania and Utah — so verify a PMHNP at the state board, not through Nursys.

Confirm the PMHNP-BC on ANCC's own verification.

And if the role is federally funded, screen the hire against the OIG's LEIE exclusion list: no statute requires the check, but the ban on employing an excluded person in federally paid work is law and OIG updates the list monthly; see hiring compliance: license verification and exclusion checks.

Point the DEA registration at your practice, and at the schedules state law allows.

A separate registration is required for each principal place of business where controlled substances are dispensed (21 CFR 1301.12(a)) — but a prescribing-only office in a state where the clinician already holds a registration, which neither administers nor dispenses controlled substances at that office and keeps no supplies of them there, is deemed not to require its own registration (21 CFR 1301.12(b)(3)).

Even so, a candidate's current registration may name a previous employer's address, so confirm the registered location and state before the first prescription.

The form reads "Schedules II–V," but the registration only operates inside the authority the state grants — in the states that bar NP Schedule II stimulant prescribing, the DEA number does not unlock them.

At initial registration or renewal since June 27, 2023, the registrant has also affirmed the one-time, eight-hour MATE training on treating and managing patients with opioid or other substance use disorders.

If the model includes telehealth prescribing of controlled substances, calendar the December 31, 2026 end of the current federal flexibilities for a compliance review — and check whether your state's telehealth and Schedule II rules are tighter.

This page is career and hiring information, not legal or clinical advice, and it is not for someone seeking treatment — confirm license, certification and controlled-substance requirements with your state board of nursing and DEA, payer rules with each payer, and employment terms with an attorney.