Nurse Anesthesia Concentration

South College

Knoxville – Doctor of Nursing Practice with a Concentration in Nurse Anesthesia

Modality: Hybrid

Work to acquire the skills you need to provide the highest quality anesthesia care for patients, families, communities, and populations in Knoxville. Go from a BSN to a DNP in Nurse Anesthesia in 3 years.

Program Quick Facts

Duration	36 months (full-time)
Start Dates	January/April/June/October
Format	Hybrid
Accreditation	COA

Discover

Our Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) with a concentration in Nurse Anesthesia Program (NAP) offers a 36-month full-time BSN-to-DNP course of study designed to produce highly skilled, independent graduate nurse anesthetists. As a graduate, you’ll be eligible to sit for the National Certification Exam (NCE) to become board-certified as Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs). **The Nurse Anesthesia Program plans to move to offering a Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice (DNAP) beginning in 2027, pending approval of the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs.**

The program features a hybrid curriculum design, with:

Distance Education courses with synchronous and asynchronous experiences.

In-person learning with faculty and peers during required intensive sessions in Knoxville, TN.
Clinical practicum courses that provide abundant and diverse clinical experiences to ensure graduates are ready to enter practice.

You will not be required to physically relocate for slightly more than one year (5 quarters) of your hybrid distance education.

Part-time clinical studies begin in the program’s second year, with full-time clinical immersion in year three.

Upon program admission, you will be assigned to a regional clinical cohort in one of our regional clinical satellite campuses:

Arizona (Phoenix/Tucson)
Connecticut (Hartford)
Georgia (Augusta)
Florida (Orlando)
Indiana (Fort Wayne)
Louisiana (Alexandria)
Maine (Bangor)
Ohio (Cincinnati)
Ohio (Dayton)
Tennessee (Knoxville)
Texas (Corpus Christi)
Texas (McAllen/Edinburg)
West Virginia (Huntington)

To facilitate clinical learning and for consistency with clinical educator oversight, you will be required to relocate prior to the beginning of your clinical studies, if you do not already reside in the region to which you are assigned. Preference for clinical campus assignment will be elicited during the application process.

Available Locations

Knoxville

Ranked #8 for 2025 Best Colleges for Nursing in America

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Hear From Our Students!

You could reach out to any professor and ask them a question and they’re very receptive. They are kind of family at this point.

Jefterson G.

DNP Nurse Anesthesia Student

To say that I did it not only for me but for my family is a really big factor for me.

Anneblythe S.

DNP Nurse Anesthesia Student

Additional Information

Concentrations in this Program

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Interprofessional Education

Interprofessional educational opportunities are abundant with faculty and residents from other South College Knoxville School of Nursing programs, the Physician Assistant program, the Doctor of Physical Therapy program and the School of Pharmacy.

Already hold a DNP in another role specialty?

The Nurse Anesthesia Program offers a Post-Doctoral Certificate (PDC) in Nurse Anesthesia for existing DNP holders in an alternate role specialty. The PDC curriculum offers advanced standing in up to four courses, following transcript and syllabus review by program administration. The Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs requires the post-doctoral certificate curriculum to be substantially equivalent to the BSN-entry curriculum. Subsequently, the PDC curriculum remains 36 months in length and requires the completion of a doctoral scholarly project with an anesthesia focus.

Program Statistics

Cohort	NCE First Time Pass Rate	NCE 60 Day Pass Rate*	Overall NCE Pass Rate	Employment (graduates within 6 months of graduation)	Attrition Rate
2024 (admitted 1/2022)	67.6%	82.3%	94.1%	94.1%	17%

*The COA pass rate requirement is 80% calculated by either first-time pass rates or the number of graduates in the most recent graduation cohort who passed the NCE on their first attempt plus the number of graduates who passed the NCE on their second attempt within 60 days of program completion.

Accreditation

The South College DNP Nurse Anesthesia Program was granted initial accreditation by the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs (COA) effective October 13, 2021. The address for COA is: 10275 W. Higgins Rd., Suite 906, Rosemont, IL 60018-5603, Phone number: 224-275-9130, website address: www.coacrna.org. Additionally, during the same October 2021 accreditation meeting, the COA granted the following two items for the South College DNP Nurse Anesthesia Program: (1) Approval of Distance Education Courses, and (2) Approval of Waiver of Graduate Degree Requirement.