Clarkson College MSN Family Nurse Practitioner: the clinical side of the degree
Clarkson College's online MSN Family Nurse Practitioner option is 49 credits, and 750 clock hours of it happen in five precepted clinical courses, from NRS 830 through NRS 844. You locate and propose every preceptor and site yourself, Clarkson signs off before registration opens to you, and the courses run one per term. Read the program as five preceptor searches in a row and it becomes far easier to plan.
Plan your five FNP preceptors
Tell us your next clinical course and ZIP code.
The degree at a glance
All five Clarkson MSN options sit on the same 19-credit core of eight graduate courses plus the zero-credit interprofessional course IPE 301. The family practice option layers 30 specialty credits on top, which is how the 2026-27 catalog reaches 49. A full-time FNP student should expect seven to nine semesters; part-time students plan on a dozen or more. With the director's approval, as many as nine graduate credits can transfer in.
Classes are online, and the lone required trip to Omaha belongs to NRS 830. The clinical work takes place in your own community, which is how the website can advertise sites "in or near your hometown" while the handbook still assigns the search to you.
To get in, you need a nursing bachelor's accredited by ACEN or CCNE (NLN CNEA counts too under Policy AD-1), at least a 3.0, a pair of professional references, and a clean RN license valid both where you practice and wherever your clinicals will be. Expect to hold an RN job from admission to graduation; the 2021-22 handbook made that a condition. For certification, the catalog names AANPCB as the FNP credentialing body.
Five clinical courses, 750 hours
The hour figures below are printed on each 2026-27 catalog course page, and they add up to the 750 clock hours Policy AA-55 sets for the MSN. Each course has its own guide on this site with the preceptor detail.
| Course | MSN hours | What the preceptor must cover | Comes after |
|---|---|---|---|
NRS 830 Advanced Physical Assessment | 100 | A general primary care provider; hours open only after the Graduate Weekend sign-off | NRS 803, NRS 805, NRS 836, NRS 838 |
NRS 832 Primary Healthcare I | 150 | Primary care across the lifespan | NRS 830 |
NRS 840 Primary Care of Children and Adolescent | 160 | At least 110 hours with a pediatric primary care provider | NRS 832 |
NRS 842 Primary Care of Women | 160 | At least 120 hours with a women's health provider | NRS 832 |
NRS 844 Primary Healthcare II | 180 | Complex patients and "increasingly independent practice" | NRS 840 and NRS 842 |
NRS 852, a two-credit transition-to-practice course, runs beside the last clinical and carries no hours. For the pediatric and women's health detail, open the NRS 840 guide and the NRS 842 guide.
Who can precept an FNP student
Physicians (MD or DO), physician assistants and nurse practitioners all qualify under Clarkson's November 2023 FNP sheet, as long as they hold a license in the clinical's state and bring two years of practice, a minimum the sheet marks "(no exceptions)". The practice itself must be outpatient primary care or a rural health clinic with a patient panel spanning children to older adults. Inpatient hospitalist work and aesthetic dermatology do not qualify.
Some limits surprise people. In Arizona, Florida, Maryland and Oklahoma a PA is off the table. A relative is never eligible. A third preceptor in one course takes written sign-off from faculty. And if you care for patients alongside several clinicians at one office, each of them, colleagues in the same group included, needs a separate agreement on file.
The full rule set lives on Clarkson's preceptor requirements, and the settings that work for each course are on FNP clinical sites.
How the five courses line up
The prerequisites fix most of the order. NRS 830 opens the clinical phase, NRS 832 follows it, and then NRS 840 and NRS 842 can come in either order because each needs only NRS 832. NRS 844 waits for both. Because the footnote under every NP track limits you to a single clinical per term, the clinical phase fills at least five terms.
That order has a practical upside: the two specialty courses are interchangeable. If a women's health provider can take you in the spring but the pediatric clinic has room only in the fall, you can ask your advisor about swapping them. Which term falls in the 12-week summer matters too, because the same hours squeeze into fewer weeks; the pacing guide runs those numbers.
Each course needs a new Clinical/Practicum Site & Preceptor Agreement Form, even when the preceptor stays the same. The last published due dates were Jun. 1 ahead of a fall course, Nov. 1 ahead of spring and Mar. 1 ahead of summer; those come from the 2021-22 handbook and the 2023 clinical sheets, so your Graduate Nursing advisor has the final word on this year's dates.
The Graduate Weekend comes first
The term you spend in NRS 830 is the term you travel. Clarkson's catalog calendar schedules one Graduate Weekend each fall, spring and summer, always a Saturday and Sunday a few weeks into the term, and you attend the one that falls in your NRS 830 semester.
In the 2021-22 handbook, clinical time for NRS 830 stayed locked until the physical assessment check-off was passed on campus, and skipping part of the weekend meant failing the course. So the preceptor you line up for NRS 830 is approved before the semester yet sees you for the first time three or four weeks in. The Graduate Weekend page has the full schedule and what the check-off involves.
Your NRS 830 preceptor must be approved before registration, even though your hours start only after the weekend.
Why Clarkson FNP students choose us
We plan the whole FNP clinical phase at once, not one course at a time. We search for primary care practices near home that see every age group, in states Clarkson's AY 2026-27 workbook clears for Graduate Nursing, and we start early on the pediatric and women's health providers that NRS 840 and NRS 842 depend on, because those two courses each call for a specific kind of provider.
Each candidate is screened against Clarkson's FNP rules before you hear the name: license in your clinical state, two years in practice, the right setting, no family ties, and the PA limit where it applies. We collect the practice's exact legal name, the preceptor's license and credential details and the contact information the DocuSign agreement asks for, so you can file well ahead of the deadline. If the site will need a new affiliation agreement, we tell you at once, since Clarkson says that paperwork can take up to two months.
Should a preceptor pull out partway through a course, we reopen the search immediately. Send your next course and ZIP code with the form below.
Questions Clarkson students ask
Can I do Clarkson FNP clinicals at the clinic where I work?
Yes, with conditions. The 2021-22 handbook lets you train at your employer provided the clinical is in another department and your paid time and student time are documented apart. A nurse on a hospital's cardiac floor, say, might train at that system's family medicine clinic across town. Faculty and Graduate Nursing review the setup exactly as they would an outside site.
Is the Clarkson College FNP program fully online?
Nearly. Lectures, assignments and exams run through Canvas, and NP students visit Omaha a single time, during NRS 830. Everything clinical takes place in your own region with preceptors you recruit and Clarkson clears. Back in 2014 the NP options called for three separate two-day campus sessions, so today's single weekend is a lighter load.
Which states can Clarkson FNP students train in?
Thirty-eight states are marked Meets in the Graduate Nursing tab of Clarkson's AY 2026-27 workbook; twelve are marked Does Not Meet, among them Alabama, Georgia, New York and Tennessee, and California and Colorado have footnotes. Clarkson wants approval settled before placement, so read the state authorization guide before relocating or crossing a state line for a site.
Can a physician assistant precept me in Clarkson's FNP courses?
In most places, yes. The November 2023 FNP sheet treats a PA like a physician or an NP, with the same two-year floor. Four states are the exception, where Clarkson accepts no PA preceptors at all: Arizona, Florida, Maryland and Oklahoma. In NRS 842, a women's health PA also needs the instructor's approval first.
How long does the Clarkson MSN FNP take to finish?
Plan on seven to nine semesters at a full-time pace, or roughly a dozen or more part time. Clarkson caps every program at seven years, counting any leave. Since the clinicals run single file, one term without an approved preceptor usually pushes graduation back a whole term; the delayed graduation guide covers that situation.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-27
We check these pages against Clarkson College's own catalog, program pages and published nursing documents. Your course faculty and Graduate Nursing advisor have the final word.
- Clarkson College 2026-27 Academic Catalog: Master of Science in Nursing
- Clarkson College: Master of Science in Nursing
- Clarkson College Policy AA-55: Credit Hour Definition
- Clarkson College 2026-27 catalog: NRS 830 Advanced Physical Assessment
- Clarkson College FNP Clinical Rotation Information, November 2023 (archived)
Clarkson asks you to find your preceptor. We make the search the easy part.
Tell us your Clarkson track, your city and your next clinical course. We line up preceptors who fit the NRS course and Clarkson's rules, gather the details the site and preceptor agreement asks for, and flag early whether the site needs a new affiliation agreement.
- Preceptors matched to the course: all-ages primary care for FNP, acute care units for AGACNP, psychiatric providers for PMHNP
- License, experience and site details checked against Clarkson's rules before the agreement is filed
- Every clinical course planned in sequence, close to home in a state where Clarkson's graduate nursing meets requirements
Start your placement plan
Track, city and next clinical course is all we need to begin.