State Requirements for NP Programs

[LilRNonthePrairie]

I was in the process of applying to a program through EKU, when I received a phone call from one of the admissions reps. She informed me that they aren't accepting students from Minnesota due to the fact that "all of the faculty teaching the courses would have to be licensed to practice in Minnesota." I am not sure where she got that information, but she followed up the phone call with an email stating that their clinical coordinator confirmed it.

I am a bit confused, because UND has a similar program, and when I spoke with the director of the program she told me that only the clinical supervisor needs to be licensed in Minnesota (which she is), so UND has had no issues with taking students from MN. Also, I attended an LPN to BSN program through a college in South Dakota while I was living in Minnesota, and I am pretty sure not every single one of my instructors were also licensed in Minnesota. All of my clinical for that program was done in Minnesota, and supervised by Minnesota nurses, so that makes sense compared with what UND told me.

So, does EKU just have some misinformation? I hate to try to argue with an institution I am interested in applying to, but this just seems weird. I looked up the Nurse Practice Act and several statutes, but came up with nothing. EKU also told me that even if I could do my clinical in a different state, they still couldn't accept me because they are not approved by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, which isn't true either because the Minnesota Office of Higher Education website is where I found out about EKU in the first place (the website has an alphabetical list of approved schools). Does anyone know of any psychiatric mental health NP programs that are online and actually do accept students from Minnesota? I am applying to the U of MN, but it's a super competitive program that only accepts a fraction of the students who apply, so I'm not holding my breath

[OBigdog26, MSN, RN, NP]

This is also happening in the state of NC. The colleges have to be approved by the UNC board of governors. I'm limited to my choices of graduate programs.

The best thing to do is contact your state board of nursing for more information.

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses

[LilRNonthePrairie]

Strangely enough, I did call the MN Board of Nursing and they had no knowledge of why certain schools were not accepting students from MN. The person I spoke with told me that starting in 2015, MN is going to begin regulating programs and advised me to watch the BON website to see when they will be posting a list of approved schools. But as of right now, they do not regulate graduate programs. She also told me that I should make sure to look for a program that was nationally accredited, as well as accredited by the ANCC so that I would be able to take the appropriate certification exam. But beyond that, she did not know of which specific programs accepted students from MN (besides schools located in MN) and which didn't, or what the reasoning is behind the schools that don't accept students from MN. She did verify that my supervising preceptor for clinical needed a MN license, but I already knew that and figured that would be taken care of by doing clinical locally.

So, now I am concerned that if I do go to a school like Brandman (which is located in CA but the DNP program is approved by the MN Office of Higher Ed.) I will start the program and somehow the BON will decide not to approve their program when they start this new 2015 regulation of graduate programs. So I guess my best option now is to apply locally, and wait a year to see what my options are...or move out of state.