Post's DNP practice hours, from the 400 you bring to the 600 you earn
Post's DNP needs 1,000 practice hours after your bachelor's degree: 600 earned inside the program, DNP project hours included, and 400 that come from your master's or a Practicum Workroom. Post's admissions page wants those 400 finished before the first capstone project course, N 740PE. Every precepted hour inside the program is spent with a nurse who holds a doctorate, at a site with a signed affiliation agreement.
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Two numbers, one total
Post writes the DNP's hours as two figures. The catalog's 600 are the practice hours you complete in Post's DNP courses, and they count the time you log on your DNP project. The 1,000 is the post-baccalaureate total the degree requires, which leaves 400 that must already be on your record from graduate study.
A nursing master's with enough practice time covers the 400. A master's that came up short makes up the gap in the Practicum Workroom, and so does the non-nursing master's that the Executive and Informatics Leadership tracks accept through their bridge. For comparison, each of Post's own non-NP MSN specializations counts 400 practice hours in the 2025-26 catalog. How Post verifies hours from another school's master's is a question to put to admissions before you enroll.
One naming wrinkle: Post's admissions page calls the course "N740E" in one place and "N740PE DNP Project I" in another, while the catalog lists it as N 740PE Capstone Project I. All three point to the same gate.
Close out the 400 before N 740PE: Post's admissions page makes them a condition of the first capstone project course, and a shortfall found late holds up everything after it.
What counts as a DNP practice hour
Post's catalog recognizes four kinds of practice time. Three of them, practice learning, precepted practice and simulation, also run through Post's master's programs; the fourth, DNP project hours, is unique to the doctorate. Only precepted practice experiences put you beside a preceptor; the practice experiences guide compares all four.
Inside a 3-credit course, Post's credit-hour model pairs the online work with 45, 30 or 15 practice hours. In the 2021-22 descriptions, the newest we could open, most DNP practice courses sat at 30 hours and the two capstone project courses at 90. Spread over an 8-week course, 30 hours is a little under four a week and 90 is about eleven, by our arithmetic. Your syllabus names the kind of hours each course expects.
DNP courses with published hours
These are the DNP practice courses whose 2021-22 descriptions we could read. The 2025-26 and 2026-27 descriptions were not readable, so treat each figure as a starting point and confirm it in the syllabus.
| Course | Title | Hours | Prerequisites |
|---|---|---|---|
N 700PE | Leadership: Setting the Example | 30 | None listed |
N 740PE | Capstone Project I | 90 | N 700PE |
N 765PE | Capstone Project II | 90 | N 700PE, N 725PE, N 740PE |
N 702PE | Organizational Complexities of Higher Education (Educational) | 30 | N 700PE, N 725PE, N 740PE |
N 714PE | Role of Technology and Simulation in Nursing Education (Educational) | 30 | N 765PE |
N 715PE | Quality Management Techniques | 30 | N 765PE |
N 742PE | Principles of Finance and Fund Development | 30 | N 765PE |
N 754PE | Application of Nursing Informatics in Data Management and Analytics (Informatics) | 30 | N 751PE, N 752PE |
N 756PE | Application of Nursing Informatics in the Management of Population Health and Public Health Policies (Informatics) | 30 | N 700PE, N 725PE, N 740PE |
N 758PE | Advanced Statistics | 30 | N 755PE |
N 781PE | Interprofessional Collaborative Healthcare Practice | 30 | None listed |
No description we could retrieve gave hours for N 705PE, N 710PE, N 712PE, N 720PE, N 735PE, N 751PE, N 752PE, N 753PE, N 782PE or BUSI 700PE, so they stay blank here rather than estimated.
The prerequisites show the program's shape in 2021-22: both capstone project courses came early, and several later courses waited for N 765PE. Your first 90-hour stretch may arrive near the start, which puts the preceptor search in your first months.
Which DNP courses need a preceptor
Under its heading of nursing programs requiring preceptors, Post's 2025-26 catalog names 17 DNP courses: N 702PE, N 705PE, N 710PE, N 712PE, N 714PE, N 715PE, N 720PE, N 735PE, N 742PE, N 751PE, N 752PE, N 753PE, N 754PE, N 756PE, N 781PE, N 782PE and BUSI 700PE. Which ones land in your plan depends on your track.
Two details stand out. The capstone project courses, N 740PE and N 765PE, are absent from that list even though they carry the most hours, so ask the Practicum Coordinator how their project time is supervised and logged. N 700PE and N 758PE also carried hours in 2021-22 without appearing there, a reminder that practice hours and precepted hours are separate counts.
Preceptor and site rules for doctoral hours
A DNP preceptor must be a nurse holding a doctoral degree, with a current RN license in the state where they practice, employed at the site where you do the work. The usual exclusions apply: no direct supervisor, no relative, no fellow student in your program. The exclusions and the Exception to Preceptor Requirements form are covered in our guide to who cannot precept you.
On the site side, the doctorate is stricter than the master's. A non-NP MSN student needs an affiliation agreement only when the site asks for one, while a DNP student needs one for every precepted experience. The request goes through Post's Affiliation Agreement Tracker, and the affiliation agreement guide explains what happens next.
Compliance runs alongside: Post requires DNP students to hold a CastleBranch account, covered in our CastleBranch guide, and the student tracking system keeps a separate tier for non-NP MSN and DNP students, where preceptor approval forms are uploaded.
The Practicum Workroom and extensions
The Practicum Workroom is Post's enrollment for making up practice hours missing from your record. The DNP version carries the code PW701 (the MSN one is PW501), and its typical user is an Executive or Informatics Leadership entrant who arrived without 400 master's hours. Post grants no extensions for workrooms, so treat the workroom window as fixed and have a site and preceptor ready when it opens.
Regular DNP courses do allow Post's two-week extension once half the coursework is done, but while an extension stays open, a DNP student may not move on to the following course. Extensions that involve clinical or practice hours go through the Clinical Coordinator, and work still unfinished when the two weeks end means repeating the course, practice time included. The extensions guide has the details.
How our desk keeps DNP hours on schedule
DNP students choose us because the preceptor they need is scarce: a nurse with a doctorate, at the right site, willing to take a student, found while you hold a demanding job. We run that search from your track, your project topic and your ZIP code, timed to Post's course calendar.
- Read your planWe map every precepted course and both capstone courses against your start date, so each preceptor is chosen with the right term in view.
- Find the right nurseWe look for nurses with a doctorate employed at a site that suits the course, and we confirm the degree and RN license against Post's rule.
- Open the agreement earlyOnce a site agrees, the affiliation agreement request goes in, well ahead of the term that needs it.
- Stay on callIf a preceptor leaves mid-course, a replacement search starts at once, with the remaining hours as the brief.
Post's coordinators make every approval; we make sure what reaches them is complete. See how it works, or send us your plan through the form below.
Questions Post students ask
Do my master's practicum hours count toward Post's DNP?
They are meant to. The degree needs 1,000 practice hours after the bachelor's; Post's DNP supplies 600 and expects 400 from your master's. If your master's recorded fewer, the Practicum Workroom fills the gap. Ask admissions how your hours will be verified, and settle it before N 740PE, the course the 400 must come before.
Can a nurse with a PhD or EdD precept Post DNP hours?
Post's catalog asks for a nurse with a doctoral degree, and the text we read names no particular doctorate. A nurse holding a PhD, EdD or DNP appears to fit that wording, but confirm with the Practicum Coordinator before you ask. Someone with a doctorate who is not a nurse falls outside the rule and would need the exception form.
What is PW701 at Post?
PW701 is the DNP Practicum Workroom, an enrollment for making up missing practice hours. It most often serves an Executive or Informatics Leadership student who entered without 400 master's hours. Post grants no extensions for workrooms, so ask your Student Success Advisor where it fits in your sequence and line up the site beforehand.
Does every DNP course at Post need a preceptor?
No. Seventeen DNP courses appear on Post's 2025-26 list of courses requiring preceptors. Other practice time comes as practice learning experiences, which need no preceptor, as simulation, or as DNP project hours. The syllabus for each course shows which kinds of hours it expects from you.
How many hours a week does a DNP practice course take?
It depends on the course. At 30 hours, the figure most 2021-22 DNP descriptions give, an 8-week course needs just under four hours a week. The 90-hour capstone project courses need about eleven. Those are our calculations from Post's published hours, so check each syllabus for the current figure.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-27
We check these pages against Post University's own catalog, program pages and published nursing documents. Your course faculty and the Clinical Coordinator have the final word.
Post asks you to select your own preceptor. We make the search the easy part.
Tell us your Post track, your city and your next preceptorship course. We line up preceptors who fit the course, collect the license report, certification and CV the Clinical Coordinator reviews, and start the affiliation agreement early so your Week 1 packet is complete before the term opens.
- Preceptors matched to the course: primary care for FNP and AGPCNP, mental and behavioral health for PMHNP, doctoral nurse leaders for DNP hours
- Preceptor agreement letter, license report, certification and CV ready for Post's approval
- Every preceptorship planned together, close to home in a state where you hold your license and Post's disclosure says yes
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