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Nurse Corps scholars told to secure jobs at sites with HPSA scores of 14 or higher and start service within nine months
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Summary
HRSA presenters told Nurse Corps scholars they must begin service within nine months of graduation at a qualifying critical-shortage facility with a primary-care or mental-health HPSA score of 14 or higher, upload a license and confirmation-of-employment form to MyBHW, and complete in‑service verifications every six months.
Hundreds of Nurse Corps scholars were briefed on Thursday on the steps required to begin their service obligations after graduation, including strict site eligibility rules and documentation requirements.
Shivani Purvis, a member of the Nurse Corps scholarship monitoring and transition team, said scholars "are required to serve at a site with a mental health or primary care HPSA score of 14 or higher," and that jobs must match the discipline and specialty for which the scholarship was awarded. She told attendees they must take licensing exams (for example, the NCLEX for registered nurses) and begin Nurse Corps service within nine months of graduation.
The program requires three eligibility criteria for a site: the facility must be a qualifying critical-shortage site type, it must have a qualifying HPSA score (primary care or mental health), and it must have a willing site point of contact in the MyBHW system to verify employment. Presenters said the point of contact can be an HR staff person or a nursing supervisor and that the employment support analyst assigned to each scholar will confirm site eligibility once the POC is active.
Monica Tia Bullock of the Nurse Corps monitoring and transition team spelled out the required uploads: "The 2 documents that you must upload and are required is your license and your confirmation of employment offer form." The confirmation form must list a start date within nine months of graduation, the awarded discipline and specialty, that the scholar will spend at least 80% of their time providing direct patient care, and that they will work a minimum of 16 hours per week.
Presenters also explained how service time is counted and monitored. Scholars may fulfill service full time (32 or more hours per week) or part time (16'2 hours per week) but must spend at least 80% of their time on direct patient care. In-service verifications (ISVs) begin after employment and must be completed every six months to confirm attendance and time worked. The program requires a minimum of 45 weeks of service per service year (allowing up to seven weeks of leave per year).
Speakers described approved reasons for suspending service (medical or personal hardship, parental leave, or call to active duty) and said suspension requests must be submitted in advance through MyBHW with supporting documentation. They warned that defaulting on the Nurse Corps contract (failure to begin or complete service) can require repayment of scholarship funds plus interest within three years.
Public questions during the webinar clarified common scenarios: a qualifying HPSA score for a facility allows eligible positions across that site if the discipline matches the scholar's award; if a site's address differs across online listings, scholars should raise the discrepancy with their employment support analyst; and scholars who plan to transfer between eligible sites should request transfers before leaving their current site so closeout verifications can be completed.
The Nurse Corps presenters said scholars who have additional questions should use MyBHW's "ask a question" feature to contact their employment assistance analyst and that the webinar recording and related links would be shared by email.
