This study determined whether there is a relationship between the number of direct acute care hours completed in a senior practicum course during pre-licensure nursing education and the scores of perception of Nurse Professional Competence (NPC) in newly graduated nurses between the third and sixth month of employment. A sample of new hires of newly graduated nurses within a large, nonprofit healthcare system was used. Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval was obtained from Liberty University's IRB and the healthcare organization's IRB prior to the survey being sent out to prospective participants and data collected. A non-experimental, correlational design was used to examine the relationship between the number of acute care hours within a senior practicum course in pre-licensure nursing programs on the newly graduated nurses' perception of NPC and the individual categories within the NPC. Descriptive statistics was used to report the central tendency of the participants as it relates to the number of direct acute care hour groups within a senior practicum course in pre-licensure nursing education and the scores for perception of professional competence of the newly graduated nurse. A Pearson product-moment correlation was used to look at the grouped number of direct acute care hours within a senior practicum course in pre-licensure nursing education and the relationship this may have on perception of professional competence scores of the newly graduated nurse. The research failed to reject the null hypothesis. The research concluded that there is a positive correlation between the number of direct acute care hours within a senior practicum course in pre-licensure nursing education and the perception of professional competence scores of the newly graduated nurse.