Colorado residents and Drexel: the RN-to-BSN path and Colorado's NP landscape

Drexel's State Regulations page names Colorado for three program groups: the MSN NP tracks together with the NP certificates, the post-master's DNP, and the Nursing Education and Leadership MSNs. The RN-to-BSN list is shorter, Alabama, Minnesota, Nebraska, Washington and Wyoming, so Coloradans can enroll there. The rule is Drexel's, and sara@drexel.edu fields questions about it.

The RN-to-BSN is fully online with no campus requirement. Its 36 planned clinical practice hours sit in three quarter courses, NURS 342 with 24, NURS 347 with 8 and NURS 348 with 4, renumbered NURS 3103, NURS 4011 and NURS 4012 in the 2027–28 semester catalog. Listed starts are Winter 2027, Spring 2027 and Fall 2027. Drexel's RN-to-BSN page covers the rest.

Colorado's nursing board, part of DORA's Division of Professions and Occupations, approves programs under 3 CCR 716-1. Its Rule 1.2 limits “nursing education program” to prelicensure study for a first-time RN or LPN license, with no clause making an RN-to-BSN or APRN program from another state register, or even send notice, before placing students in Colorado. The Board's website didn't load during research, so only the rule text was reviewed.

A Colorado student permit exists, but it's aimed elsewhere: at people from nontraditional out-of-state programs, ones without faculty-supervised clinicals, who need in-state clinical hours before they can be licensed.

In AANP's terms Colorado is full practice, with a catch for prescribing: an NP must attest to 750 hours of mentored experience, under an agreement with a physician or an APRN, before gaining prescriptive authority. Colorado RN licenses have been multistate since January 19, 2018, when the state entered the Nurse Licensure Compact. The APRN Compact, a separate agreement, hasn't been enacted in Colorado.

Colorado also offers a rural and frontier preceptor tax credit for unpaid preceptors working in shortage areas. Advanced practice nurses qualify, and HB22-1005 added RNs and other licensed outpatient clinicians and lifted the annual cap to 300 preceptors. It also confined the credit to students of accredited Colorado colleges and universities, which rules out precepting for a Pennsylvania school.

Denver Health, UCHealth, Intermountain Health, HCA HealthONE and CommonSpirit Health are among the systems employing clinicians in the Denver-Aurora, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins-Loveland and Greeley areas. They illustrate where to look, not where Drexel students train.

A Drexel NP student offered a job in Denver runs into two things: Colorado's place on Drexel's NP list, and the compliance office's warning that relocating can put clinical requirements at risk. Raise the offer with your academic advisor and sara@drexel.edu before you accept. Colorado nurses heading to a state Drexel admits have the opposite question, and the moving during clinicals page covers both directions.

For Colorado RN-to-BSN students, we find a setting and a supervising clinician for each clinical course, matched to its focus: health assessment in NURS 342, educating patients, professionals and the public in NURS 347, and population health in NURS 348. Your Drexel faculty get an organized plan that's ready for their sign-off.

When you move on to NP study from a state Drexel admits, we carry that planning into Drexel's clinical placement process: preceptors who fit Drexel's standard, sites ready for its affiliation agreement, and paperwork complete before Drexel reviews it.