Maryville NP clinicals in Pennsylvania, now a compact state

Pennsylvania on Maryville's June 2026 grids

Maryville's older 2020 status page doesn't name Pennsylvania. New York, next door, is the nearby exception: every NP track is marked “Does not meet” there, so keep your clinical on the Pennsylvania side; see our New York page.

Section 21.118 and your license

Pennsylvania's regulations speak directly to students like you. 49 Pa. Code § 21.118 lets an RN practice nursing without a Pennsylvania license in a clinical setting their program requires, provided they:

• hold a current RN license in another U.S. jurisdiction or Canada
• are enrolled in an accredited graduate nursing program or BSN program
• practice in the clinical setting the program requires
• receive no compensation other than scholarships, stipends or awards related to the program

Working as an RN in Pennsylvania while enrolled is a different matter: for that, the rule directs you to a temporary practice permit and licensure by endorsement. Maryville's own rule still wants your license valid in whatever state you treat patients in. Since July 2025, one multistate license from your compact home state satisfies both at once; if your license is single-state and from outside the compact, ask Maryville how it treats § 21.118. See RN license for clinicals.

No approval step found, with new rules pending

Neither the Pennsylvania State Board of Nursing's regulations nor its web guidance, as far as we found, make out-of-state or distance-education programs seek approval before their students start Pennsylvania clinicals. The Distance Education Application, meanwhile, is meant for programs that already hold Board approval.

The Board's education rules are being rewritten. The final-form version of IRRC #16A-5141, a comprehensive rulemaking covering nursing education programs, was delivered September 8, 2026, and an IRRC public meeting on it is scheduled for October 15, 2026. In the final text, § 21.118 survives in substantially the same form. If your clinical starts after the new rules take effect, check with the Maryville Online Clinical Team.

Written agreements, two physicians and your preceptor

AANP rates Pennsylvania as reduced practice. Throughout their careers, Pennsylvania NPs practice under a written agreement with physicians, and to hold prescriptive authority they need collaborative agreements with two or more. Those arrangements are standard and don't keep an NP from precepting you.

They also mean a prescribing NP has at least two collaborating physicians, and a board-certified MD or DO among them can qualify under Maryville's rule too: APRN, MD or DO, board certified, unencumbered, with at least twelve months in practice. For PMHNP, Maryville also takes an LCSW, PsychD or PhD psychologist. See preceptor requirements.

Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Harrisburg

The Census Bureau's 2025 estimates put about 4.24 million Pennsylvanians in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro and about 2.42 million in the Pittsburgh metro, followed by Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton (about 775,000 on the Pennsylvania side) and Harrisburg-Carlisle (about 617,000). Among large systems, you'll see Geisinger, Jefferson Health, UPMC, Penn State Health and Penn Medicine, listed to show where NP students search; being named here says nothing about taking Maryville students.

The Philadelphia metro also spans New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, and the Allentown metro reaches into New Jersey. A site across those lines is a clinical in that state; see New Jersey. We found no Pennsylvania preceptor incentive in our research, and Maryville doesn't pay preceptors.

Our part in a Pennsylvania search

We look for board-certified preceptors in your part of Pennsylvania who fit your track, and we help you pull together the credentials Maryville's reviewers check. With the compact now in force, most of the work is finding a preceptor with room in their schedule. Maryville approves every preceptor and site.