Tennessee and FIU: Check the Moratorium Before You Search

Senate Bill 2013 and the two-year freeze

SB 2013, with its House twin HB 1905, carries the title Nursing Education Integrity and Oversight Act and would create new sections 501 to 506 in chapter 7 of Title 63. At its center is a directive to the Board of Nursing: for two years, neither accept nor approve applications from schools headquartered elsewhere that seek to run programs, admit students or place clinical students in Tennessee. Pre-licensure, RN-BSN and APRN programs get identical treatment in the text.

Schools already approved when the act takes effect hold on to that approval, yet the Board and Tennessee's Center for Nursing Advancement may demand data from them, preceptor rosters and placement statistics included. By June 30, 2027, the Center is to recommend new rules for outside schools whose students use Tennessee clinicians or sites. The legislature's findings state that a significant number of such programs place students with too little oversight or accountability.

The act is effective once it becomes law. Ask the Board to confirm its status, and whether anything in its current rules (chapter 1000-01) affects a graduate student from a Florida school. Whether FIU holds, or would need, Tennessee approval is not something FIU publishes.

Supervised practice, and an incentive that skips Florida schools

AANP places Tennessee in its restricted group: NPs work under physician supervision, with limits on Schedule II to IV prescribing and on opioid supply.

Tennessee's hospital association runs a Nurse Preceptor Incentive Program on state grant money, paying preceptors for a qualifying block of one-to-one precepting in each cycle while funds hold out. To take part, a preceptor holds a Tennessee or multistate license with no restrictions and completes a preceptor course from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, which has a module for NP preceptors.

The student side is narrow. It counts accredited Tennessee programs, and it counts schools from seven nearby states (Virginia, Missouri, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama) when the hours are done in Tennessee. Florida is absent, so an FIU student's preceptor would not qualify. What FIU itself gives preceptors is described under preceptor recognition.

Licensing in Tennessee and Florida

Tennessee has issued multistate nurse licenses since the compact's enhanced version began in January 2018, while the APRN Compact never became law there. On the FIU side, the MSN admits Florida-licensed RNs; the Florida RN license page explains why a Tennessee compact license is an open question.