Finding your own preceptor at Clarkson College

Who it covers, and the one exception

The rule reaches every online graduate path: the MSN in family, adult-gerontology acute care and psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner practice, the MSN in Nursing Education and in Nursing Healthcare Administration, the post-graduate certificates, and the BSN to DNP nurse practitioner tracks. DNP students also recruit their own project mentor, whom Clarkson's 2023-24 DNP Hours Guide calls the External Subject Area Expert/Mentor. Post-graduate DNP students, already certified as nurse practitioners, look for that mentor and for anyone they may be asked to shadow or interview.

Nurse anesthesia is the exception. That program trains residents at its own clinical sites, and its current policy says it will not open a new site because an individual resident asks for one. Campus BSN clinicals appear to be scheduled by Clarkson as well, though no current page says so outright.

Reading the "1,000+ clinical sites" line

Clarkson's nursing page advertises "Access to 1,000+ clinical sites across 45 states." It is marketing copy, and it answers a different question from the one a graduate student has. The line does not say who finds a graduate site, it is not broken down by program, and nothing beside it changes the catalog note that approval comes before registration.

Read it as Clarkson describing its reach, not as an offer to place you. Where it can help is the paperwork: ask your advisor whether a clinic you are considering already has an affiliation agreement with Clarkson, because an existing agreement spares the Compliance office from starting a new contract. Where your clinical can be approved at all is settled by Clarkson's state workbook, not by this figure.

Where Clarkson students look

• Your own employer, in another department. Clarkson requires graduate students to keep working as RNs and allows clinicals at the workplace outside the student's own unit; the workplace guide sets out the conditions.
• Health systems' own request routes. Several systems in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota take NP student applications through their own portals and windows, and they ask you to apply rather than approach their clinicians. The health system guide covers each one.
• Independent and rural practices near home. Outpatient primary care and rural health clinics are named FNP settings; psychiatric practices, community mental health centers and crisis units are named PMHNP settings.
• Clinicians you know professionally. Former colleagues and providers you have worked beside as an RN, provided they meet the rules and are not relatives.
• A placement service. Our desk runs the search for you; see how to choose one.

The same handbook adds a caution: students "should NOT contact the preceptor directly" where a location has its own channel. Read with the rest of that section, which makes the search your job, it means going through each organization's official route, such as a health system's placement office, rather than around it.

How we take the search off your hands

Clarkson students hand the search to us because it is the step that decides everything after it. Our placement desk looks for clinicians near you whose practice fits your next NRS course, screens each one against Clarkson's rules for your track, and confirms they can carry the hours in your term.

You get a preceptor who is ready to sign, the details the DocuSign agreement needs already gathered, and an early warning if Clarkson has no contract with the site yet. While one course runs, we are already lining up the next. Clarkson's advisors and faculty still make every approval; we make sure the preceptor in front of them already fits. Tell us your track, city and next course in the form on this page.