Preceptors for Drexel's online AGACNP

The AGACNP is taught online with a residency component and is open to part-time students only; Drexel puts the usual finish at three years. It is a 57.0-credit program with 800 clinical hours in the current quarter catalog, and its Fall 2027 semester form comes to 43.0 credits. Admission is open for Winter 2027, starting January 4, and Fall 2027, starting August 23.

Drexel Online wants two years of recent hands-on acute care nursing at the bedside, with critical care preferred. The CNHP program page also carries a stricter line, two years of current critical care within the last five years, so ask admissions which applies if your background mixes units.

Two intensives bring you to campus: four days in week one of summer for NURS 570, and two days in week seven of fall for NURS 571. The second lands in the middle of a live rotation, so warn your fall preceptor early; On-Campus Intensives has the timing. Residents of eleven states, from Alabama to Wyoming, cannot enroll, and rotations may not take place in New York.

Drexel's AGACNP page sets 160 hours as the requirement for every clinical practicum course and says students usually spread them over two eight-hour days a week. Over a 10-week quarter that pattern yields exactly 160 hours, which is why a preceptor's two-week absence puts a course behind. The didactic runs alongside, a synchronous online class once a week for three hours.

The gate into NURS 570 is a grade of B or better across the shared NP core, advanced pathophysiology, pharmacology and health assessment, and the acute care pharmacology course NURS 554. Titles and descriptions are on Drexel AGACNP clinical courses.

Any AGACNP preceptor must hold one of three credentials Drexel recognizes, NP, CNM or physician in an approved specialty, along with a valid state license and certification, a board certification that is current, and a year or more of clinical practice. For acute care work that realistically means acute care NPs, hospitalists, intensivists, surgeons and other physicians on inpatient services. Each one supplies Drexel with a CV and copies of both credentials.

The course titles set the settings. Medicine carries NURS 570 and NURS 571, a surgical service carries NURS 572, critical care carries NURS 573, and NURS 580 can sit in any of the three. One hospital can cover several quarters when its NPs rotate across services, but a surgical team and an ICU often mean two different preceptors.

Physician assistants are common on hospital teams, yet they are not on Drexel's list. Acute care NP students must also carry ACLS on top of AHA BLS; BLS, ACLS and PALS explains what Drexel accepts.

Hospitals control their own student pipelines. Most will not look at a request until the school holds a current affiliation agreement with them, and several route requests through platforms such as Clinician Nexus or myClinicalExchange. Tower Health will not accept NP rotation requests at all, and Allegheny Health Network and Penn State Health bar students from approaching providers directly. ChristianaCare, which is not signing new school agreements, lists Drexel among its existing graduate partners.

Students report the pressure too. A Drexel AGACNP student posting on allnurses in 2020 called finding clinical sites next to impossible and urged new students to build connections right away. Your own hospital is a natural first ask, but Drexel publishes no rule on training at your employer or on your unit, so confirm with your track director first. The clinical affiliation agreement page explains the contract every hospital needs.

Summer is where the AGACNP calendar gets tight. The sample plan puts both NURS 570, with its four-day intensive, and NURS 580 in summer, and Summer 2027 lasts only seven weeks (classes June 21 to August 7), a one-off as Drexel changes calendars. Fitting 160 hours into seven weeks would take well over two clinical days a week, and Drexel has not said how it will handle that term. Ask before a preceptor signs on for it.

Once semesters begin in Fall 2027, four clinical courses replace the five: NURS 7500, NURS 7501, NURS 7502 and NURS 7503, the AGACNP I to IV sequence in diagnostic reasoning and clinical decision making. The semester catalog does not publish their hours, so only the quarter catalog confirms the 800-hour figure.

The fall semester opens August 23, weeks earlier than a quarter-system fall, which matters to a hospital that books students by rotation block. Continuing students get individual transition plans from Drexel's advisors. See the semester switch for the full calendar.

We treat the acute care search as a hospital search. A placement advisor targets acute care NPs and inpatient physicians near you by service line, so medicine, surgery and critical care are each covered in the right quarter, and confirms that each hospital takes NP students and what its onboarding asks for. Before you make contact, every preceptor has already been verified against Drexel's credential, certification and experience rules.

Hospitals move faster when the paperwork is ready, so we line up the preceptor's CV, license and certification copies, the hospital's affiliation contact and its onboarding checklist before Drexel's review begins. Drexel decides; we hand it a complete file that already matches its preceptor rules. If a preceptor changes services or leaves mid-quarter, the search restarts immediately to protect your two days a week. Send your hospital region on the form here; how it works shows each step we take.