Preceptors for Drexel's FNP with Emergency Specialization

This track is Drexel's MSN Family/Individual Across the Lifespan NP with an emergency specialization built in: 63.0 credits under the current quarter catalog and 58.0 under the 2027–28 semester catalog. It is online and part-time. The quarter catalog accepted no applications for 2026–27, and Drexel Online now lists one start, Fall 2027, beginning August 23.

To be admitted you need one to two years of RN or APRN work in emergency, critical care, urgent care or trauma, with BLS, ACLS and PALS already in hand. The catalog also insists on an unrestricted Pennsylvania RN license no matter which state you call home, a stricter line than the multistate option on Drexel's compliance page. Settle with the Clinical Compliance team which rule governs your rotations.

Residency limits mirror the other NP tracks: Drexel cannot enroll residents of WY, SD, OR, ND, NE, MO, MN, LA, KS, CO or AL, and New York is off the table for clinical hours. Washington's approval of Drexel practice experiences covers the FNP MSN but does not mention this specialization, so a Washington resident should check with Drexel before planning rotations there. State authorization lists every rule.

The quarter sample plan starts earlier than the standard FNP: NUPR 520 sits in fall of year one and the family courses begin that winter. FNP V (NURS 538) is not part of this track. Drexel gives no hours for each emergency course; four family courses at 160 make 640, which leaves 500 for the three emergency courses, the same figure the Emergency/Trauma certificate states.

Course detail lives on emergency NP clinical courses and Drexel FNP clinical courses. One catalog quirk to raise with your advisor: this track uses NUPR 600 Advanced Pharmacotherapeutics in place of NURS 549 and NURS 556, which the family clinical courses list as prerequisites.

For the emergency half, Drexel's standard list still governs: NPs, CNMs, or physicians in a specialty it approves, each holding their state's license and certification plus active board certification after more than a year of practice. In an emergency setting that means emergency physicians and NPs who work in emergency medicine. Physician assistants, who staff many emergency departments, sit outside the list.

Drexel's own list of specialization settings reads: ground and air transport, corrections, trauma and critical care units, emergency departments and urgent care. A workable plan anchors NURS 673 and NURS 674 in an emergency department or a high-acuity urgent care and saves a trauma or critical care preceptor for NURS 675, whose focus is the trauma and critically ill patient.

The family half follows the FNP settings: primary care clinics, physician offices, schools, public health and similar ambulatory sites. Whichever half they serve, preceptors hand Drexel a CV plus proof of licensure and board status, then score you twice in E*Value. Drexel preceptor requirements covers the rest.

Emergency departments sit inside hospitals, so each one runs through hospital student onboarding and needs a clinical affiliation agreement with Drexel before your first shift. Some systems close the door outright: Tower Health will not forward or accept NP rotation requests, and UPMC's advanced practice office excludes emergency medicine from the specialties it helps place. Delaware's ChristianaCare, by contrast, names Drexel among its graduate clinical partners.

Scheduling adds friction. Emergency clinicians work shifts, including nights and weekends, and your hours still have to land inside Drexel's term dates. When a department leans on physician assistants, the pool of preceptors who fit Drexel's rule shrinks again.

Drexel's pages also disagree about the intensives. In week one of winter the catalog schedules two short ones, a single day tied to NURS 536 and two days tied to NURS 673, while the CNHP program page describes two to four intensives of two to three days each. Confirm the count before promising a preceptor your winter weeks, and keep BLS, ACLS and PALS current through NURS 675.

Because the only start on offer is Fall 2027, new students follow the 2027–28 semester catalog from the beginning. The family half becomes NURS 7600, NURS 7601, NURS 7602 and NURS 7604, and the specialization becomes three emergency care courses, NURS 7610 to NURS 7612, each 5.0 credits.

The semester catalog prints no clinical hours for these courses and says nothing about intensives, so the 1,140-hour figure is confirmed only for the quarter version. Semester fall and spring terms last around 14 weeks, and summer offers either a full 12-week term or two six-week halves. Ask your track director for hours per course before sizing a request to an emergency department.

Students already in the quarter version cross into semesters on August 23, 2027, and each gets an advisor-built plan mapping the rest of the sequence. The semester switch has the calendar.

We run this track as two searches from the start. Family preceptors are matched to the four primary care courses, while the emergency search opens early enough for a hospital's onboarding to finish. A placement advisor looks for emergency physicians and emergency NPs near you, checks each against Drexel's preceptor rule, and confirms the department takes NP students before you spend an hour on its application.

Each emergency site's packet includes the physician's or NP's CV and credential proof, the hospital's signer for the Drexel agreement, and its student onboarding requirements. The approval is Drexel's; our part is making sure nothing is missing when it reviews the file and every piece fits its rules. If an emergency preceptor's rota changes mid-course, we go straight back to the search. The form on this page asks for your state, start term and next course, and how it works walks through what happens after.