UC's DNP project practicum: NDNP9025, NDNP9035 and NDNP9038

Three courses, 500 hours

UC's DNP Project page says students complete three DNP practicum courses totaling 500 hours. They are project courses, not clinical rotations: each one moves the same project forward, and each requires at least two meetings with your project team. In the post-MSN DNP plan they fall in semesters 2, 3 and 4. For BSN-to-DNP students, these three courses come in addition to the specialty practicums, not in place of them.

NDNP9038 shares its semester with NDNP9040, the DNP Leadership Seminar. Some DNP major maps also list NDNP9042, a manuscript writing seminar, as an elective that needs your chair's permission.

500 hours or 504?

Older documents give a different number. UC's DNP Handbook, effective Fall 2019, described 168 immersion hours per practicum, 504 in total, at twelve hours a week. The current DNP Project page says 500 and gives no split by course.

Use 500 as the current figure, and ask your chair how the hours divide across the three courses and how you document them. We found no current UC source that answers either question, and the answer decides how much weekly time you'll need at your project site.

If you are weighing tracks, clinical hours by UC track sets the 500 project hours beside each specialty's clinical total.

Choosing a project site

The post-master's DNP is not an NP preceptor search. UC's DNP FAQ notes that most post-MSN students keep full-time jobs and that students' work environments often provide an ideal setting for the project. The 2019 handbook went further: students were to name an inquiry within their practice area when they applied, and projects could partner with a clinical agency or a health department.

A workable site has a problem worth solving, a leader willing to let you test a change, and data you can reach within UC's timeline. Because NDNP9025 is where you defend the proposal, the site conversation belongs before or early in that semester, not during implementation.

Admission, the course sequence and the rest of the program are on UC's post-master's DNP.

Your project team

UC's DNP Project page describes the team as a UC chair plus at least one other UC doctoral faculty member. You choose the topic with faculty advisors, and the team meets with you at least twice in each practicum.

The 2019 handbook described a team of two to four people that could include members from outside the College of Nursing, and said it should include a content expert or clinical mentor. The current page doesn't repeat that, so ask your chair whether a mentor at your site can join the team and what UC needs from them.

The project ends in a public defense and a manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Both take planning in the final term, so settle your data access and site approvals in the first two practicums.

What UC leaves unstated

Several practical questions have no public UC answer. Raise them early with your chair and with the Clinical Site Coordinator your program page points you to:

• Whether a project site needs an Educational Affiliation Agreement, as specialty clinical sites do.
• Whether a site mentor completes anything like the Preceptor Application.
• How practicum hours are logged and verified.
• Whether any MSN clinical hours carry into the DNP; UC describes no gap analysis for it.
• How long the post-MSN DNP runs: its major map shows four semesters but lists a five-year duration.

Orientation, defense and where you can live

Post-MSN DNP students attend a mandatory one- to two-day orientation in their first fall, and there's an optional half-day DNP workshop in summer. The defense is where UC's pages disagree: the DNP FAQ lets students more than a two-hour drive from campus defend virtually, while the post-master's certificate FAQ says students visit campus to defend. Ask your chair which applies to you; other campus dates are on the immersion page.

UC's online DNP programs start in fall only and can't enroll students in Washington or in the seven states closed to UC graduate clinicals. Washington is open to UC's MSN and certificate programs, so that limit catches DNP students in particular. If you might move during the program, check UC state authorization first.