Buyer Beware: Interstate Issues Impacting Nurse Practitioner Education

Buyer Beware: interstate Issues Impacting Nurse Practitioner Education

      The need for highly trained health care professionals has led to the wide-spread use of out of state programs to assist in meeting this need.  This is particularly true in nurse practitioner education where a critical shortage of professionals exist.  One factor, which is often not considered when accepting students in out of state distance education program, is the individual state’s rights to regulate licensure within respective state borders.  Article X of the United States Constitution has broadly been used to permit states the right to regulate licensure requirements within respective state borders. This fact has tremendous implications for Nurse Practitioner programs in a distance education environment across state boundaries.  Depending on the state, a number of state agencies and requirements may be required to allow entry level nurse practitioner students to complete programs from out of state universities.  These requirements vary greatly, with some states simply accepting national credentialing standards to other states implementing stricter requirements such as individual state approval, faculty licensure, higher education board approval, and a wide range of state imposed fees. This session will focus on listing some of the key issues encountered by a university's School of Nursing respective to individual state's regulation of out of state programs. The session will provide essential questions that need to be asked of individual states prior to accepting out of state students into hybrid or distance education nurse practitioner programs.  Finding out individual state requirements will reduce a wide-range of problems before students are accepted into a program.  Take this opportunity to learn from our experiences