Missouri nurses and Drexel: open programs and Missouri's clinical rules

Drexel keeps a separate list of excluded home states for each program group. Missouri is on the NP list, which spans all nine MSN NP tracks and the NP certificates, and on the DNP list. It's missing from two others: the RN-to-BSN's and the advanced-role MSNs'.

The exclusion is Drexel's and turns on where you live, not where you're licensed. For anything the lists leave unclear, email sara@drexel.edu; Drexel state authorization sets all the lists side by side.

Missouri's Board of Nursing publishes nothing we could find that makes a school from another state apply, or even send notice, before its students train in Missouri. Its program rules under 20 CSR 2200-2 speak to programs the Board itself approves.

The student exemption leaves a gap. RSMo 335.081(6)(a) lets people practice without a Missouri license during their course of study if they're enrolled in “approved schools of professional nursing,” yet it's silent on how a school outside Missouri counts. The Board wasn't asked directly, so any program placing students in Missouri should settle that question with the Board first.

AANP rates Missouri restricted: NPs need a physician collaborator for as long as they practice, and the arrangement carries ratio limits, chart review and controlled-substance restrictions. Drexel accepts physicians in approved specialties alongside NPs and certified nurse midwives, so both partners in a Missouri collaboration can qualify, subject to Drexel's approval.

The state tax credit in RSMo 135.690 goes to physicians and PAs holding Missouri licenses who take on Missouri medical or PA students unpaid. Nurse practitioners and nursing students sit outside it entirely, so an NP precepting any student gets nothing from it.

Missouri's two largest metros cross state lines, and for Drexel the lines matter. The St. Louis area stretches into Illinois, which Drexel's NP list leaves open; the Kansas City area stretches into Kansas, which the list closes. Clinicians work across systems like Mercy and SSM Health, BJC HealthCare, CoxHealth, and MU Health Care, named here as places to look, not as Drexel partners.

Missouri wrote the Nurse Licensure Compact into state law in 2017 and put it into effect on January 19, 2018, so a Missouri multistate RN license reaches every other compact state.

For Drexel's RN-to-BSN, we line up a Missouri setting for each course carrying clinical practice hours, NURS 342, NURS 347 and NURS 348, and brief each clinician on what the course asks of you. In the Nursing Education or Leadership MSN, the practicum preceptor is ours to find, with credentials assembled for Drexel's review. Drexel's RN-to-BSN page covers the program itself.

A Drexel NP student eyeing a move to Missouri should speak to Drexel before anything else. If you're leaving Missouri for a state Drexel admits, we map your clinical courses onto the new state's rules and Drexel's, and every document reaches Drexel complete. Moving during Drexel clinicals lists the steps in order.