What counts as a clinical hour at UNCW

Direct patient care, and nothing around it

UNCW's clinical handbook draws the line in two sentences: "Clinical hours do not include travel time to/from sites or electronic medical records (EMR) training or orientation to clinical sites. Clinical hours are direct patient care only."

That leaves out more than students expect. The morning spent on a health system's EMR course, the badge and parking walkthrough, the onboarding modules a hospital assigns and the drive from Wilmington to a practice in Fayetteville all happen before or around patient care, so none of them go in the clinical column. For FNP students, the handbook adds that observation visits do not count toward encounter totals.

Non-patient work has its own place in UNCW's DNP: the 250 non-patient or immersion hours in the new curriculum, logged separately from patient care. The immersion hours guide explains that category.

When the clock starts and when it stops

1. Course orientationNo hours before the first day of course orientation for that practicum.
2. Graduate Clinical Coordinator approvalThe GCC's approval includes a review of your immunizations, background check and drug test. UNCW warns that "Starting prior to the completion of both items may cause a disqualification of those clinical hours."
3. Hours inside the semesterClinical hours for each course "must be completed prior to the last day of classes for that semester."
4. Log as you goEncounters go into Typhon within 5 days; the Typhon logs guide covers the details.

Semester dates themselves are a known conflict: the Preceptor's Corner lists fall 2026 as starting August 10, while the Registrar's first day of classes is August 19. Treat your course's own dates as the ones that count.

Telehealth: two different rules

Telehealth counts at UNCW, but the FNP and AGPCNP rule differs sharply from PMHNP's.

An FNP student whose preceptor runs a heavy video-visit schedule can therefore use up the 50-encounter allowance quickly. Plan to keep most of your encounters in person, and track the telehealth count in Typhon as you go. PMHNP students have more room, but the 50% ceiling is combined across all rotations, so a mostly virtual first rotation leaves less telehealth room for the later ones.

How we set you up for hours that count

UNCW students choose us because we plan placements around the rules that decide whether an hour counts. We look for preceptors whose clinic days fit inside your semester dates, sites within a realistic drive, and practices whose onboarding and EMR training can be finished before your course orientation so your first approved day is a patient day. Where a site sets its own onboarding steps, we flag them early so you can finish them before the term.

For FNP and AGPCNP students we favor in-person panels over telehealth-heavy schedules, and for PMHNP students we line up prescribers and therapy preceptors who respect the one-student-per-day limit. Approval remains with UNCW; the schedule we hand you is designed so every logged hour stands up to UNCW's rules. The steps are on how it works.