West Virginia and NKU's online nursing programs

Both NKU table copies agree on West Virginia, so there is no conflict to chase. The Huntington-Ashland metro straddles West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, and all three are NKU-approved, which gives students in the western counties practices on both banks of the Ohio River to consider.

Your clinicals sit outside the nursing board's reach. The West Virginia Board of Registered Nurses oversees pre-licensure schools only, and its out-of-state approval application is written for them; graduate programs are pointed to WVHEPC, the state's higher education commission, and to their accreditor. WVHEPC's nursing office asks for its own approval only in two cases: the school has no NC-SARA membership, or at least ten of its students would train at a single site. NKU appears in the NC-SARA directory, and counting students per site is NKU's job.

AANP places West Virginia in its reduced practice group. For their first three years of prescribing, NPs there collaborate with a physician under a written agreement, and a Schedule II narcotic prescription is capped at three days. An NP past that stage, with a year in role and a job at the site, fits NKU's preceptor rules well.

Look first at the big three systems: Vandalia Health (whose members include CAMC, Mon Health and Davis Health), WVU Medicine and Marshall Health Network. The metros are Charleston, Huntington-Ashland, Morgantown and Hagerstown-Martinsburg. That last metro reaches into Maryland, and Maryland is not authorized on NKU's MSN table, so students around Martinsburg should keep their sites on the West Virginia side.

Outside the larger cities, each specialty has a smaller pool of preceptors, so start early. NKU's floor for preceptor details is 30 days before a clinical, and it strongly prefers 90; our deadlines page lines those dates up with NKU's 7-week sessions.

Compact licensing began in West Virginia on January 19, 2018. The state's guide for out-of-state graduate clinicals splits students by home: if you live in West Virginia, hold its RN license; if you live in another compact state, the multistate license from that state is what you use. See RN licenses for NKU clinicals for how NKU words its own license requirement.

West Virginia NKU students give us the search so they can keep their focus on coursework and shifts. A placement advisor reaches NPs, physicians and psychiatric prescribers near you, checks each against NKU's track rules, and packages each preceptor's license, CV and signed Preceptor Responsibilities form for your Medatrax request. The final call is NKU's, and the file it opens from us is already whole.