Drexel AGACNP clinical courses and their 800 hours

For AGACNP, Drexel's CNHP program page spells out the per-course requirement directly: each clinical practicum course requires 160 clinical hours in total. The catalog's course titles then move you through acute care medicine, surgery and critical care before a final course that can sit in any of them.

Each course carries 5.0 quarter credits inside the 57.0-credit MSN. The clinical hours overview shows how 800 hours compares with Drexel's other tracks.

Drexel's program page describes the rhythm plainly: the usual pattern is two eight-hour clinical days a week, and the didactic side meets live online once a week for three hours, which is mandatory. Clinical time and coursework run at the same time, every quarter, for five quarters.

Your preceptor records the result in E*Value, completing a midterm and a final evaluation and validating your hours, as the E*Value page explains. With the OCI in NURS 570 taking four days of week one, the first quarter has less room than the later ones, so your first preceptor's availability matters most.

The catalog places AGACNP rotations in medical, surgical and critical care settings, and the titles show which one each quarter leans on. NURS 571 pairs acute and critical care medicine, NURS 572 is surgical, NURS 573 is critical care, and NURS 580 accepts acute, critical care, medical or surgical placements, which makes it the natural place to fill a gap in your experience.

Drexel's rule allows NPs, CNMs, and physicians practicing in approved specialties, provided they are board certified now and have practiced for at least a year; the preceptor requirements page has the full rule. In practice that points to hospital-based NPs and physicians whose work matches the course. Drexel does not publish its list of approved specialties, so confirm unusual ones with your track director. Hospitals near Philadelphia, such as Penn Medicine, expect an affiliation agreement with your school to be in force before they take you on.

The first acute care course needs a B or better in the ten shared NP prerequisites, which for this track include NURS 554, the AGACNP pharmacology course. NUPR 520 comes about three quarters earlier and introduces the contracting and compliance steps; see the NUPR 520 guide.

ACLS is mandatory for acute care NP students under Drexel's compliance rules, and it does not replace BLS: every student also holds American Heart Association BLS. The certification page covers both. On experience, the admission wording varies. Drexel Online and the 2027–28 catalog ask for two current years at the bedside in acute care, preferably critical care, while the CNHP page also mentions two years of critical care within the last five. Confirm which applies to you.

The post-master's AGACNP certificate uses the same five courses, but its hours depend on where you start. Master's graduates who are not NPs, and NPs who are not practicing, need the three Ps taken within the last five years and all 800 hours, ACNP I through ACNP V. For practicing NPs, the certificate page puts clinical hours at up to 500, with the exact figure set by a Gap Analysis. Either way, the AGACNP pharmacology course must be taken at Drexel before clinicals.

Credits and length disagree across Drexel's pages: two years and 34.0 to 39.0 quarter credits in the catalog, but 29 credits over a single part-time year on the CNHP certificate page. Ask the program which applies to you. The next certificate start is Fall 2027, on the semester courses. The Gap Analysis page explains the review itself.

In the 2027–28 catalog, AGACNP runs four 5.0-credit clinical courses inside a 43.0-credit MSN. Each carries the same title pattern and a numeral, and none states its hours.

Five quarter courses becoming four semester ones leaves open whether 800 hours survives the switch. NURS 570 and NURS 580 are both summer courses on the quarter plan, and the Summer 2027 term lasts only seven weeks, June 21 to August 7. If either course lands there, ask your advisor for your transition plan early; the semester conversion guide has the calendar.

Hospital placements involve more people than an office practice, and we plan for that from the start. We map your five quarters against the settings in each course title, then look for hospital preceptors who can offer two full days a week, so medicine, surgery and critical care arrive in the order Drexel's sequence expects. We also learn each hospital's student onboarding steps early, since a hospital runs its own checks alongside Drexel's.

For every placement we collect the preceptor's CV, license and board certification record, identify who at the hospital handles the clinical affiliation agreement, then hand you a package ready for Drexel's contracting and compliance teams. Drexel makes the approval decision; we make sure nothing in the file slows it down. If a preceptor's schedule collapses mid-quarter, we start on a replacement immediately. More on our AGACNP placements.