Nurse Practitioner Track: Family

This in-class family nurse practitioner track is designed to prepare practitioners to be expert clinicians in the area of primary healthcare for patient populations across the lifespan. Emphasis is placed on health promotion, disease prevention, health policy and culturally competent care. The family nurse practitioner is adept in the skills of history taking and physical exam, ordering diagnostic tests, prescriptions, and management of drug therapy, diagnosis, and treatment of common health problems and minor injuries, diagnosis and management of chronic conditions, performance of minor surgical procedures, and the coordination of services and referral of specialty care when needed.

The in-class graduate family nurse practitioner program is a high-quality program that demands a major commitment of time by the advanced practice nursing student. Because students are being educated to diagnose and treat patients, the graduate program was designed to combine the convenience of online learning in core and elective coursework with the necessary rigor of on-campus support and clinical courses to become a competent and confident advanced practice nurse on graduation.

Students are required to be on campus every quarter starting with NURS 550, the Advanced Physical Assessment and Diagnostic Reasoning course and throughout all clinical practicum courses including NURS 576, 575, 578, 577, and 579.  Students also come to campus to participate in simulated and standardized patient clinical learning experiences conducted in our new state of the art multidisciplinary patient simulation lab.

On completion of the program, students are eligible for Family Nurse Practitioner Certification through ANCC or AANP.

Key Program Features

• Clinically active faculty with national board certification.
• Mandatory on-campus visits:
  • Year 2 mandatory 1/2 day track orientation - Fall.
  • NURS 550 – Advanced Physical Assessment and Diagnostic Reasoning. Students are required to come to campus once weekly for didactic lecture and weekly lab and for up to 6 additional days — 3 days for midpoint review and skills evaluation and for a 3 day final re-demonstration of the physical examination. Please note, all post-master's students are required to attend the clinical orientation day. 
  • NURS 576 FNP I – Summer Residency 5 days (includes Standardized Patient/Simulation Experience).
  • NURS 575 FNP II – Fall Standardized Patient/Simulation Experience 1 day.
  • NURS 578 FNP III – Winter Standardized Patient/Simulation Experience 1 day.
  • NURS 577 FNP IV – Spring Residency 5 days (includes Standardized Patient/Simulation Experience).  
  • NURS 579 FNP V – Summer Standardized Patient/Simulation Experience 1 day.

This is a 59-credit graduate track with a 720 clinical hour requirement. Clinical practicum courses consist of two parts; didactic lectures and clinical practicum rotations that run concurrently. The didactic lectures are held once a week in-class for three hours. Each clinical practicum course has a required 160 total clinical hours with the exception of the fifth practicum course which has 80 required clinical hours. Students typically complete two eight hour clinical days each week and are required to identify and get approval for their own Preceptors and Clinical Sites each quarter.