Arkansas clinicals for Drexel nursing students

Arkansas is absent from every Drexel exclusion list, so a resident here can apply to any online nursing program Drexel offers.

Two borders matter. Missouri to the north and Louisiana to the south both sit on Drexel's NP and DNP exclusion lists, so a move to Springfield or Shreveport mid-program is a conversation with your advisor before it's a lease. Read moving during clinicals for the order of questions.

Research into Arkansas's rules found nothing that makes a school based elsewhere seek approval just to place students for clinicals. The Board's prelicensure standards, 17 CAR Part 125, reach an out-of-state institution only when it sets out to establish a new program in Arkansas, which also brings in the Division of Higher Education. Its APRN program rules in 17 CAR Part 123, Subpart 10, handle programs through national-accreditation deemed status. That reading hasn't been checked with Board staff.

Practically, that makes Drexel's own process the gate in Arkansas: the site puts its name to Drexel's affiliation agreement, and Clinical Compliance signs off on your file. If a hospital asks whether Arkansas requires anything more of Drexel, route the question to Clinical Compliance so the answer comes from the school.

Arkansas's Nurse Practice Act excuses students from licensure when the nursing they do is incidental to a program the Arkansas Board approves. That exemption is written for Arkansas-approved schools, so as an RN in Drexel's program you train on your own license instead.

Arkansas has written the Nurse Licensure Compact into its practice act and has issued multistate licenses from the compact's January 2018 start. Drexel's own rules split here: Clinical Compliance takes a home-state multistate license as sufficient, while the program pages list Pennsylvania licensure as a pre-clinical step. Compare both on the Pennsylvania RN license page and ask Clinical Compliance which one your track follows.

AANP calls Arkansas reduced practice. An Arkansas NP must keep a regulated physician agreement governing one or more parts of their practice, and some medications can only be prescribed under a physician protocol agreement. Every NP preceptor you find therefore has a physician partner, which often puts two candidates within reach of one phone call.

Drexel's list covers nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physicians in approved specialties who hold board certification, an Arkansas license and twelve months or more of practice; physician assistants are left off. Pediatric students should note that Drexel recommends Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware licenses for its pediatric tracks to widen site choices. More on Drexel's preceptor rules.

The Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metro is the state's largest, with Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers in the northwest close behind; Fort Smith, which spills into Oklahoma, and Jonesboro follow. UAMS Health is the academic system, and Arkansas Children's is the name pediatric students know. Baptist Health and CHI St. Vincent, part of CommonSpirit, both operate in Little Rock, while St. Louis-based Mercy has hospitals in both Fort Smith and the northwest corner. Research found no Arkansas incentive for NP preceptors, so your outreach message should lean on Drexel's Clinical Faculty title and certificate of hours.

We map the collaborating NP-physician pairs in your region, from Jonesboro to Bentonville, and approach the ones whose practice fits your Drexel course. Each candidate is vetted against Drexel's criteria before you're introduced, and we assemble the CV, Arkansas license, board certification and site contact Clinical Compliance needs. Drexel approves; we see to it that nothing in the file slows that down. Ask for an Arkansas search.