Degree Requirements
The DNP is a professional, practice-oriented doctorate, such as the Doctor of Medicine (MD), Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD), or Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT), in contrast to the research-oriented PhD. CSU DNP education is designed to allow nurses to develop advanced competencies for increasingly complex clinical practice and to prepare nurses for faculty and leadership roles. Nurses with DNP degrees represent the enhanced knowledge that can be applied in clinical settings to improve nursing practice and patient outcomes.
Program Length
The program will be two years in length, with a minimum of 36 units taken across five semesters.
Clinical Practice
Graduates of the DNP program are required to have a total of 1,000 clinical hours in an acceptable educational program. Hours completed through previous programs may be counted toward the 1,000 hours required by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and specified in The Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice (.pdf).
Doctoral Project
The doctoral project is an integrative clinical scholarship experience, through which the student prepares a scholarly product, such as a pilot study, a program evaluation, a consulting project, or a quality improvement project. Each student will work under the guidance of a DNP faculty doctoral-project chair to complete the project in a specialty area of nursing practice.
