UC clinicals in Arkansas

Which UC programs work from Arkansas

Arkansas carries no UC program exclusion. The only Arkansas residents UC turns away from a track are those applying to the programs reserved for Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana residents.

NPs, physicians and PAs in an Arkansas plan

AANP rates Arkansas as reduced practice: at least one element of an NP's practice runs through a regulated physician agreement, and certain medications need a physician protocol agreement before an NP can prescribe them. That framework is the state's. UC asks something else of an Arkansas preceptor: graduate preparation, current certification, a full year's practice in the role and an active, unencumbered license valid in Arkansas.

UC will also look at physician assistants in Arkansas. Each PA is judged individually and contributes only a limited block of hours, and a nurse-midwifery student's PA time stops at 20 hours, confined to ANW8006 and subject to the program director. Whatever PA time you use, your hours with a certified NP in your population focus still have to reach 20% of the total. PA preceptors at UC has the detail.

What the Arkansas Board requires of schools from elsewhere

Nothing we reviewed from the Arkansas Board, in its rules or on its website, requires a school based in another state to seek permission before placing students for clinicals alone. Its prelicensure standards, 17 CAR Part 125, only pull in out-of-state institutions that want to open a program in Arkansas, while the APRN program rules in Subpart 10 of 17 CAR Part 123 rely on national-accreditation deemed status. ASBN staff haven't confirmed this reading.

Arkansas's Nurse Practice Act exempts students' nursing that's incidental to study in Board-approved programs (A.C.A. 17-87-103(2)). As an RN, what matters for UC is that your license is valid in Arkansas.

The supplemental Arkansas background check

UC's 2026-27 Student Handbook lists Arkansas among the states requiring a supplemental state background check for clinicals, in addition to UC's standard check. The handbook makes extra checks and fingerprinting the student's cost. Follow the steps UC gives you for it and start early enough that a delay can't collide with the end-of-week-2 site deadline. More on background checks and drug screens.

Little Rock, Northwest Arkansas and the borders

Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway is the biggest market, at about 778,000 people in the 2025 Census estimates, with Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers close behind at about 622,000. About 193,000 lived in the Arkansas part of the Fort Smith metro and about 139,000 in Jonesboro. Arkansas Children's, CHI St. Vincent, UAMS Health, Mercy (in Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas) and Little Rock's Baptist Health are the large systems: examples of where Arkansas clinicians work, and your CSC can say whether UC has an agreement with any of them. Our research found no Arkansas preceptor incentive.

Watch the edges. Tennessee and Louisiana are among UC's seven closed states, so a clinic across either line can't host your hours; see Louisiana. The Fort Smith metro runs into Oklahoma, which is open but where UC won't take a PA preceptor.

License, and why Arkansas students choose us

NCSBN dates Arkansas's implementation of the current compact to January 19, 2018, and the compact sits inside the Nurse Practice Act itself, as Subchapter 6 of Title 17, Chapter 87. Either an Arkansas RN license or a multistate one meets UC's rule; the APRN Compact isn't enacted. See RN license for clinicals.

Arkansas gives a UC student more preceptor options than most states, and we put all of them to work. Our search covers NPs and physicians statewide, plus PAs where UC may take one, planned so your NP hours still clear UC's 20% line. We keep every site on the Arkansas side of the Tennessee and Louisiana borders, time the plan around the supplemental check, and hand your CSC a finished Preceptor Application for the final say. Send your track and town through the form on this page.