Program
Clerkship Program
Program Overview:
This unique clerkship provides Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) students with advanced clinical training in psychopharmacology and psychotherapy, focusing on reproductive psychiatry for those assigned female at birth (AFAB). Our goal is to prepare the next generation of nurse practitioners to deliver high-quality, compassionate reproductive behavioral health care from menarche to menopause.
Training will focus on understanding, treating, and managing patients during
Reproductive Life Cycle
and how fluctuations in reproductive hormones, along with developmental, relational, and societal transitions, can significantly influence mood, cognition, behavior, and psychiatric illness.
Perinatal Period
as a time of profound biological, psychological, and social change. How rapid shifts in reproductive hormones, neurobiology, sleep, and stress physiology intersect with identity transitions and caregiving demands, placing individuals at increased vulnerability for psychiatric symptoms and relapse.
Menopausal Period
as a period marked by significant neuroendocrine fluctuation and life transition, variability and eventual decline in estrogen and progesterone affect neurotransmitter systems, sleep regulation, stress response, and cognition, increasing vulnerability to new-onset or recurrent psychiatric symptoms.
Clinical Setting
Day Hospital Program
- Nation's first partial hospital program for pregnant and postpartum individuals.
- Includes group and individual therapy, and medication management.
Perinatal OCD Intensive Outpatient Program
- Serves pregnant and postpartum individuals with OCD, anxiety, panic, and phobias.
- Utilizes Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and CBT in a group setting.
Division of Reproductive Psychiatry
- Massachusetts's first FQHC to have a fully integrated reproductive psychiatry clinic with collaboration OB Clinicians, Substance use treatment and full scope OBGYN services.
- A Moms Do Care clinical site providing specialty substance use disorder treatment treatment during the perinatal period.
- Provides full spectrum reproductive psychiatry from menarche to menopause, seeing patients from adolescence up to the geriatric period.
- Opportunities for rotations in SUD, OB/Pedi Behavioral Health and OBGYN services
Clinical Site Rotations
r
Women & Infants Hospital
- Center for Women's Behavioral Health
- 2 Dudley St, Providence, RI 02905
- P: (401) 453-7955
Brockton Neighborhood Health Center
- Div. of Reproductive Psychiatry
- 63 Main St, Brockton, MA 02301
- P: (508) 894-3277
Requirements
- minimum of 3 days/week,
- 8:30 AM - 2:15 PM
- located in Providence
- Rhode Island,
- In person only.
- Spans one semester
- 2-3 days/week,
- 11:30 AM - 5:30 PM
- located in Brockton, MA
- Hybrid available after
- oriented on-site
- Spans one semester
Demographic
- WIH is a major tertiary center, and one of the largest obstetrical facilities in New England, delivering around 8,000+ babies annually, and care provided will focus on the perinatal period.
- BNHC is a federally qualified health center (FQHC) providing accessible care to diverse and underserved populations in Brockton and the surrounding region, and care involves treatment across the reproductive lifespan.
Clerks will;
At Women & Infants
- Join our clinical team
- Attend weekly didactic sessions
- Join monthly interdisciplinary case conferences
- Observe group therapy with CBT, DBT, and dyadic attachment-focused modalities.
- Observe and conduct psychiatric interviews with PMHNP precepted supervision.
- Participate in diagnosing and treating patients
At Brockton Neighborhood Health Center
- Attend integrated meetings
- Participate in in-depth case reviews
- Rotate through OB Behavioral Health, DRP, SUD treatment teams
- Participate in the care of patients across the reproductive lifespan
- Assist with patient and provider education
Application Information
Submit CV and
Letter of Intent (<500 words)
- Deadline: February 2nd, 2026.
- Send to; Sarah Stern, PMHNP-BC (SStern@carene.org) and
- Sarah Krajewski, CNM, PMHNP-BC (Krajewskis@bnhc.org)
Interviews Start
- March 2nd, 2026.
Placements Confirmed
- April 2nd, 2026.
Semester Begins
- September 8th, 2026.
*Bilingual applicants are strongly encouraged to apply.