51.38 Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration, Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing
· SOC 29-1141
Registered nurses assess patients, plan and deliver care, administer medication and treatments, and coordinate with the rest of the clinical team. In Florida the licence is issued by the Florida Board of Nursing, and eligibility runs through a Board-approved nursing programme and the NCLEX-RN examination — not through accumulated coursework.
Licensure and accreditation
Read this before planning a route. Eligibility to sit NCLEX-RN depends on GRADUATING FROM A NURSING PROGRAMME THE FLORIDA BOARD OF NURSING HAS APPROVED. A student can hold transferable credit for every course on this page and still not be eligible, because the credential runs through the programme rather than through the credits. Two consequences follow. First, confirm a programme is Board-approved and accredited (ACEN or CCNE) BEFORE enrolling, not after. Second, an RN-to-BSN degree-completion programme is for people who are ALREADY licensed — it does not lead to initial licensure, and its name does not say so.
Three routes, and they are not interchangeable
Florida runs three distinct routes to and through RN licensure, and the difference matters more than the course list does.
- Associate degree (A.S.) in Nursing, usually at a Florida College System institution. The shortest route to initial licensure. Graduates sit NCLEX-RN.
- Baccalaureate (BSN), pre-licensure, usually at a state university. Four years including the general-education and science prerequisites below. Graduates sit NCLEX-RN.
- RN-to-BSN degree completion. For nurses who already hold the licence. It does not lead to initial licensure. Many of the upper-division courses listed here appear in both a pre-licensure BSN and an RN-to-BSN programme, under the same numbers — so the course list cannot tell you which kind of programme you are looking at. The programme description can.
The prerequisites are where most people are actually stopped
Admission to a nursing programme is competitive and is decided largely on the science prerequisites below, taken before the nursing sequence begins. They are ordinary college courses, open to anyone, and they are the part of the route a student controls.
Watch the anatomy and physiology numbering. Florida teaches the same subject under two prefix families — BSC2085C/BSC2086C and APK2100C/APK2105C. BSC is what nearly every health-professions prerequisite list actually names. The credit articulates either way; a requirement stated by course number may not. Check the exact numbers your target programme lists, in writing, before you register.
The nursing sequence is cohort-locked
Once a nursing programme begins, the courses run in a fixed, gated order with clinical placements arranged around them, and most run once a year. A failed course does not cost a term — it costs until the course runs again, typically a year, and may require re-application. Where a lecture and its clinical laboratory each list the other as a corequisite, failing either means repeating both.
Before the first clinical day
Clinical placement requires Level 2 fingerprint background screening, immunisation and TB records, drug screening, health insurance and BLS certification, and the clearances take weeks. Start them the week you are admitted, not the week before the rotation. A placement a hospital declines cannot be solved by working harder.
What to keep
Keep every clinical hour log and competency evaluation. A receiving programme or another state’s board must attest to your clinical competence under its own accreditation, so it may accept the credit and still require its own practicum. Course numbers do not carry that record; your own file does.
A program is a field of study, one level above a degree — each page says which degrees it
covers and which Florida institutions award them. ⚠ The count is institutions that
awarded a credential in the field in 2023;
it is not a promise that a school runs this exact degree, and it counts something different
from the course-based list further down.
Careers filed under the same broad field in the federal classification
(HEALTH PROFESSIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS) — often they share early coursework, and each row says which group it is filed in.
⚠ Worth reading BEFORE you commit: switching between neighbours is cheap early and
expensive late.
Selected, not exhaustive — the courses specific to this path plus the foundations it is built on.
A course number does not identify a course in Florida: always check your own
institution's catalog and take a syllabus to an adviser.
BSC2085
—Anatomy and Physiology I
Guide
Anatomy and Physiology I — the single most commonly named nursing prerequisite in Florida, and the usual gate on competitive admission.
⚠ Two equivalent packagings, and the outcomes are the same. 19 institutions run BSC2085 (3 cr lecture) alongside BSC2085L (1 cr lab); 7 run BSC2085C, one integrated 4-credit course. ✅ For transfer, lecture + lab completes exactly as the combined form does — register for whichever pair your own catalogue lists. The subject is also numbered APK2100C, and BSC is what health-professions prerequisite lists name.
BSC2086
—Anatomy & Physiology II
Guide
Anatomy and Physiology II — the second half; nursing programmes require the pair, not one of them.
⚠ Same two packagings as BSC2085: lecture (3 cr) plus BSC2086L (1 cr) at 19 institutions, or the integrated BSC2086C (4 cr) at 7. ✅ Equivalent in outcome and in transfer. Also numbered APK2105C.
MCB2010
—Microbiology
Guide
Microbiology — infection, transmission and control, which underpins every aseptic procedure in the clinical sequence.
⚠ MCB2010 (16 public carriers) and MCB2010C (12) are both widely carried. Most nursing programmes require the version WITH a laboratory; confirm which your programme accepts.
HUN2201
—Fundamentals of Human Nutrition
Guide
Human nutrition — required by most Florida nursing programmes and directly applied in patient teaching and care planning.
DEP2004
—Human Growth & Development
Guide
Human growth and development across the lifespan — the developmental frame that the paediatric, adult and gerontological rotations all assume.
PSY2012
—General Psychology
Guide
General psychology — a common prerequisite and the groundwork for mental health nursing.
STA2023
—Elementary Statistics
Guide
Statistics — required by baccalaureate programmes and the reason evidence-based practice coursework is readable rather than recited.
⚠ ⚠ Two ids carry this course. STA2023 is the form 39 Florida public institutions use; STA2023C is used by one. The guide currently sits on STA2023C. Register by the number your own catalogue prints.
ENC1101
—English Composition I
Guide
Freshman composition — a general-education requirement everywhere, and a Gordon Rule course where a C-minus does not count.
⚠ ⚠ Two ids carry this course. ENC1101 is the form 39 Florida public institutions use; ENC1101C is used by three, at 4 credits rather than 3. The guide currently sits on ENC1101C.
NUR3805C
—Nursing Role and Scope
Guide
Nursing role and scope — the entry course to the professional sequence: what a registered nurse is licensed to do and answerable for.
NUR3065C
—Health Assessment
Guide
Health assessment — the physical assessment skills every later clinical course assumes you already have.
NUR3125
—Pathophysiology
Guide
Pathophysiology — disease mechanism, and the course pharmacology and the medical-surgical sequence are both built on.
NUR3145
—Pharmacology
Guide
Pharmacology — drug action, dosage and administration; the highest-consequence knowledge on the path.
NUR3026
—Person Centered Care I
Guide
Person Centered Care I — the first clinical course of the medical-surgical sequence.
NUR3215
—Person Centered Care II
Guide
Person Centered Care II — the second; the sequence is gated, so this follows NUR3026 by design.
NUR4216
—Person Centered Care III
Guide
Person Centered Care III — the third, at increasing acuity.
NUR4257
—Person Centered Care IV
Guide
Person Centered Care IV — the fourth and most acute; typically the last clinical course before the terminal practicum.
NUR3505
—Mental Health Nursing
Guide
Mental health nursing — a required clinical rotation in its own right, not an elective.
NUR4445
—Person Centered Care of Families
Guide
Person centered care of families — the maternal, newborn and paediatric material, usually with its own rotation.
NUR3826
—Legal and Ethical Aspects of Nursing
Guide
Legal and ethical aspects of nursing — scope of practice, consent, documentation and mandatory reporting, all of which the licence turns on.
NUR4165
—Essentials of Evidence-Based Nursing Practice
Guide
Evidence-based practice — reading the research literature well enough to change what you do; this is what the statistics prerequisite was for.
NUR4615
—Person Centered Population Health
Guide
Population health — community and public health nursing, a required component of a baccalaureate curriculum.
NUR4827C
—Nursing Leadership and Management
Guide
Nursing leadership and management — delegation, supervision and care coordination, which a new graduate does from the first shift.
NUR4286-UWF
—Concepts of Quality and Safety in Nursing
Guide
Quality and safety in nursing — error, reporting culture and improvement method, taught as its own course at UWF.
⚠ ⚠ The bare number NUR4286 carries TWO DIFFERENT SUBJECTS in Florida: the statewide record defines it as Gerontological Nursing, while UWF teaches quality and safety on it. This page names the UWF reading deliberately. A transfer evaluator matching on the number alone cannot tell the two apart — send the syllabus.
39 Florida public institutions teach courses on this path. The count is
how many of the 8 listed courses each one carries — it shows where
the path is best covered. It is not a statement that a school offers this as a
degree; for that, check the institution’s own programme list.
Requirements change. These are the authorities that decide them — check them directly before
committing to a route.