BLS, ACLS and PALS for Drexel NP students: which cards your track needs

Drexel's certifications page says CPR certification must be the Basic Life Support certification from the American Heart Association, and that only AHA BLS will be accepted. A CPR or BLS card from any other organization won't meet the rule, however similar the course looked, so check the issuer on your card before you upload it.

AHA's Resuscitation Quality Improvement program counts. Drexel's FAQ says a card submission that reads BLS RQI will be accepted, which helps if your employer keeps staff certified through RQI.

Upload the card to CastleBranch and compare its expiration date with your whole clinical term. Drexel's agreements with clinical sites require students to be CPR-certified, so the card needs to be valid on every clinical day, not just on the day the compliance team reviews it.

Drexel's certifications page ties ACLS to Acute Care NP students and PALS to Pediatric NP students. Mapped onto the current tracks, with the gaps marked:

“Not listed” means Drexel's certifications page doesn't name that card for the track; a clinical site can still ask for it. NRP doesn't appear on Drexel's list at all, and the Women's Health/Gender-Related track is a nurse practitioner track rather than a midwifery program.

ACLS is required for Acute Care NP students, and it doesn't replace BLS. Drexel's FAQ explains that every health professional needs BLS certification and that the ACLS class does not teach BLS skills, so an AGACNP student uploads two current cards, not one.

The label plainly covers the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care track, whose rotations run in medical, surgical and critical care settings across NURS 570 to NURS 573 and NURS 580. Whether it also reaches Pediatric Acute Care and Dual students isn't spelled out. Those students already need PALS, so ask your track director whether ACLS is expected as well before a site asks you first.

AGACNP students typically complete two eight-hour clinical days a week, so a lapsed ACLS card can cost you shifts quickly. The course sequence is on AGACNP clinical courses.

PALS appears on Drexel's list for Pediatric NP students (and Nurse Anesthesia students) without separating the primary care and acute care tracks. The online Pediatric Acute Care NP page goes further and names current PALS certification among its admission criteria, so acute care and dual students should hold it from the start of the program.

Pediatric Primary Care students are the open question. Read literally, the rule covers every pediatric NP student. If you're on the primary care track without PALS, confirm with your track director well before NURS 642, the first clinical course on all three pediatric tracks. Holding PALS anyway can also help if a primary care preceptor's practice sends you to urgent or acute pediatric settings. The pediatric sequences are laid out on PNP clinical courses.

The emergency track is where every card applies. Drexel's FNP with Emergency Specialization page requires AHA BLS, ACLS and PALS before rotations, and the catalog lists ACLS, BLS and PALS among its admission requirements alongside one to two years of ED, critical care, urgent care or trauma experience as an RN or APRN.

Keep all three current across the whole program, which runs 1,140 clinical hours through the FNP sequence and NURS 673 to NURS 675. The Emergency/Trauma NP certificate, open to board-certified FNPs, shares NURS 673 to NURS 675, but Drexel's public pages don't list its card requirements separately, so check with the program before you enroll. More on those courses is on emergency NP clinical courses.

Your cards sit in CastleBranch, where the compliance team checks them against your term dates. A card that lapses partway through a course is a compliance gap, so renew ahead of the expiration date rather than in the week it runs out.

Plan renewals around the clinical calendar. Drexel runs ten-week quarters until Fall 2027 and longer semesters after that, so a renewal class booked in the break between terms usually disrupts nothing. When you renew ACLS or PALS, book the course early enough that the new card is uploaded before the term it needs to cover.

If you live near Philadelphia, Drexel's FAQ notes that the university's Department of EMS is an authorized AHA training center.

Acute care, pediatric and emergency placements are specialized searches, and they're work we're built for. We look for preceptors in the settings your track needs, from critical care units for AGACNP to pediatric acute care for PNP students and emergency departments for the emergency track, then check the site's onboarding list for anything beyond your AHA cards. For the emergency track, that means emergency and urgent care preceptors for the specialization courses as well as family preceptors for the FNP sequence.

Drexel approves each preceptor and site; we make sure your preceptor's credentials and the site's contracting contact reach the college in full. Should a preceptor pull out mid-course, we're ready with the next search straight away, so your remaining hours stay on track. Find your track on our programs page.