Reimund Serafica is both a tenured professor at UNLV and board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. In addition to teaching, he practices virtually with a psychiatric company in New York. For one day of practice, he sees between eight-14 patients from all over the country. Moreover, as a tenured professor, Serafica is mostly on a research track, so besides teaching and practicing, he also produces scholarly work.
He says there is no magic formula to managing these roles, though he encourages prioritizing which projects to work on. “You have to [say], ‘Will this help me achieve my goals with my clinical practice, my research, and my teaching?’ I think if you have that kind of framework to work on,” he said, “then things will be easier, instead of doing other things that may not impact you professionally or may not impact your student or your research.”
Being collaborative is critical, he said. “No man is an island. You cannot just research on your own. It would be best if you had collaborators who understand your work and will be help you. The same is true in clinical practice. [As] a new practitioner in the field, I need good clinical collaborators or mentors that will help.”
Practicing mental health virtually has its share of positives and negatives. For instance, Serafica acknowledges if you prescribe medication, it’s easier to witness side effects in person than through a computer screen (like jerky movements of parts of the body that the patient can’t control). But on the other hand, he said patients can be more guarded and cautious in a clinical setting verses being more relaxed and comfortable talking virtually in their natural home environment, an important factor in assessing and diagnosing someone’s mental health status.
But regardless of format, Serafica says one of the joys in practicing mental health is seeing the improvement with each session. “You can see the whole persona change,” he said. “There are positive outcomes that came out of that consultation, either by referring them to the right therapist or by providing them with the right medications, or a combination of both.” He likens this feeling to his educator role. “If the student succeeds after they get out of the program, and you see them in a conference presenting, you see them as a colleague, a clinician, or an educator, that's a big achievement for you as well,” Serafica said, “because you contributed to that success. For me, that's rewarding when students do something outside the classroom to contribute to society. I think that speaks a lot to the educator that helped that student.”
