Faculty Spotlight: Trisha Price-Smith, DNP, PMHNP, RN—Becoming a Nurse and Teaching Others to Think Like One
Ask the learners who have trained alongside Trisha Price-Smith, and you’ll hear the same thing: “I love that she spent the ENTIRE time with us on the floor,” one learner wrote. “Makes you feel at ease.”
Price-Smith, DNP, PMHNP, RN, assistant professor I in Experiential Learning at Nightingale College, did not arrive in nursing through a straight line. She arrived by following work that was both practical and deeply human. Science and problem-solving sat on one side. Presence with people in their most vulnerable moments sat on the other.
That combination took her through acute care, corrections, home health, hospice, case management, and behavioral health. What kept drawing her attention was rarely only the medical problem in front of her. It was the person behind it: what they feared, what they had survived, what they believed, and what helped them move forward.
Psychiatric mental health nursing was the place where more of those pieces could exist in the same room. Becoming a PMHNP felt less like leaving nursing and more like finding the part of nursing that fit her most completely.
“You could say that I was looking for the sector of nursing that could hold all of me,” said Price-Smith. “All of them held parts of me, but nothing has had room for all of me quite like psychiatry. Still waters run very deep. I run very deep.”
From practice into teaching
Teaching grew out of that same instinct. Price-Smith has always wanted to understand why something works, not just memorize what to do. At the beginning, nursing asks learners to hold an enormous amount of information while they are still figuring out how to think like a nurse. She likes helping them move from “I memorized this” to “I understand what is happening and I know what to do next.”
Price-Smith joined Nightingale College in November 2022 because she wanted to help change the culture of the profession. Nursing can be deeply supportive. It can also carry hierarchy, intimidation, and the expectation that new nurses should already know what they have not yet had the chance to learn.
“I believe learners should be challenged, held to high standards, and expected to develop strong clinical judgment,” she said. “But none of that requires humiliation or fear. People learn better when they feel safe enough to ask questions, acknowledge what they do not know, and make corrections without believing that being wrong means they do not belong in nursing.”
What experiential learning actually looks like
Price-Smith's role is more hands-on than a typical classroom experience. Her work helps learners take what they have studied and apply it in real or realistic clinical situations. That can mean supervising in clinical settings, helping them prioritize, connecting assessment findings to pathophysiology, talking through communication with patients and families, reinforcing safety, and debriefing so they understand not only what happened but why.
A classroom can teach what a concept means. Experiential learning asks what it looks like when there is an actual person in front of you, several things happen at once, and you have to decide what matters first. That is where clinical judgment starts.
She also continues to practice psychiatric mental health. “I think the two roles strengthen each other,” she said. “Clinical practice keeps my teaching current and grounded, and teaching forces me to keep asking myself whether I can explain what I know clearly enough for someone else to use it.”
The moment that stays
The most rewarding part, Price-Smith said, is watching a learner stop seeing nursing as a collection of isolated facts and start seeing the whole picture. They stop asking “What answer are you looking for?” and start saying “This is what I’m noticing, this is what I think is happening, and this is what I would do next.”
When she first started at Nightingale, she had the same local group semester after semester, from course 225 through graduation. At the beginning, she felt clearly like their teacher. By the end, talking with them felt much more like talking with peers.
“I had watched them become nurses,” she said. “There is something extraordinary about meeting someone when they are still trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together and then, a few years later, realizing you are having a completely different level of conversation with them. That is probably one of the clearest moments I have had of thinking: this is why I teach.”
What she sees early, and how psychiatry shapes the room
One of the earliest challenges for many learners is believing they should have all the answers right away. Price-Smith works to reframe that expectation, reminding them that good nursing is not about never being uncertain. It is knowing what you know, knowing what you do not, knowing where to find the answer, asking for help, and responding safely.
Psychiatric mental health practice has made her attentive to the person behind the behavior. A patient may be angry, withdrawn, demanding, frightened, or hard to engage, and there is usually more happening than what is visible. She tells learners to stay curious rather than immediately judgmental. Ask: “Hey, I am picking up on this emotion. Wanna talk about it?” The same lens applies to learners. Anxiety affects performance. Shame affects learning.
Advice for someone just starting
Do not confuse being new with being incapable.
“You are not supposed to know everything yet,” said Price-Smith. “Ask questions. Be curious. Pay attention to patterns. Learn why, not just what. And when you make a mistake or misunderstand something, correct it and keep going. Nursing is not built in one class or one clinical rotation. It is built layer by layer.”
One of the things she is proudest of is that her career continued to evolve while always remaining rooted in nursing.
“I have simply kept finding different rooms inside the same house,” she said.