Become a Preceptor for Purdue Global NP Students
If you are a nurse practitioner or physician willing to host a Purdue Global NP student, you are the scarcest resource in this entire pipeline, and we would like to make saying yes as easy as it should be. This page covers the clinician's side of the equation: why these students need community preceptors specifically, what a term of supervision actually asks of you, what your site signs, and how to raise your hand. We are an independent preceptor finder service that matches Purdue Global MSN students with local clinicians, we are not Purdue University, Purdue Global, or the CCNE, and every match is verified through the University's own process.
Why do Purdue Global students need you specifically?
Because their program is built around clinicians like you. Purdue Global's MSN nurse practitioner coursework is delivered fully online, and the practicum happens locally, at real clinics, under real community preceptors, with the student asked to be the lead advocate for finding their own sites, supported by the University and a Clinical Student Manager.
That model works when community clinicians say yes, and it stalls when they do not. The students searching for you are practicing registered nurses in one of four tracks, family, adult-gerontology primary care, psychiatric mental health, and adult-gerontology acute care, and the scarcity is worst exactly where the need is: psychiatric prescribers and acute-care clinicians with hospital privileges. One yes from you typically unblocks a student's entire term.
What does a term of precepting actually involve?
Concretely, hosting a student means supervised clinical hours at your practice across a term, on a weekly rhythm you agree to before anything starts.
- Supervision and teaching. The student sees patients under your oversight, at a pace you control. You decide how much rope to give as competence shows.
- Sign-off. You verify the student's logged hours in their program's clinical tracking system and contribute to their evaluation, structured, but not burdensome.
- A defined window. The commitment is scoped to the term and the weekly schedule you accepted, commonly one to three clinic days a week depending on the course's hour target, and you see that target before you say yes.
- Patient care stays yours. Nothing about hosting a student transfers clinical responsibility away from you or your site's normal standards.
Students are expected to arrive with their University-side clearances done, background check and immunization clearance among them, and to follow your site's own onboarding rules on top, see what students clear before day one.
What will your site be asked to sign?
One document matters most: a clinical affiliation agreement between your site and Purdue Global. It is a contract between the organizations, not between you and the student, and it covers liability, insurance, and each party's responsibilities, the normal legal frame for hosting any learner.
If your site has hosted Purdue Global students before, the agreement likely already exists and applying it to a new student is administrative, roughly 2 to 4 weeks. If your site is new to the University, expect the review and signature to run commonly 1 to 2 months, mostly waiting on whoever reads contracts at your organization. We shepherd that paperwork so it does not land on your desk to chase, the mechanics are on our affiliation agreement guide. Anything you sign personally is defined by the University's own verification process, and you will see every document before you commit to anything.
Do you qualify?
The pre-screen is short. You likely qualify to precept if you have:
- an active, unencumbered license in your state,
- board certification as an NP in a population focus, or a physician credential (MD or DO) in a specialty that matches a track, family medicine, internal medicine, geriatrics, psychiatry, or acute and hospital care,
- patient volume a student can learn from, and
- the willingness to teach and sign off honestly.
The University makes the final call on every preceptor through its own process, and the exact criteria live in the student's current handbook, so treat our screen as the fast filter and the University's verification as the decision. The credential-by-credential detail is on our preceptor requirements page, it is written for students, but it is the same list we screen you against.
Is precepting paid?
Arrangements vary, and we will not pretend otherwise. Some clinicians precept without compensation as a professional contribution, the same way someone once made room for them; some practices treat hosting students as a recruiting pipeline for future NPs; and where an honorarium arrangement exists for a specific match, we will tell you exactly what it is before you commit. What we will not do is dangle a number here that your actual match might not carry.
The honest pitch is this: precepting keeps your own practice sharp, builds the local pipeline your clinic hires from, and fixes, one student at a time, the bottleneck that nearly ended most NPs' educations. If the terms of a specific match matter to your decision, ask us first and we will be straight with you.
How do you raise your hand?
Tell us who you are and what you can host: your credential and specialty, your city and state, the days per week you could supervise, and when you could start. That is enough for us to map you against students searching in your area now.
Reach us through the contact page, the chat on this site, or WhatsApp and SMS from the buttons in the corner. There is no obligation at the screening stage, and if a match is not right, a student whose track, schedule, or site needs do not fit yours, we will say so rather than force it. If you want to see the process from the student's side first, how it works shows where you fit in it.
Good to know
Do I need teaching experience to precept?
No formal teaching history is required by us to be considered. What matters is an active, unencumbered license, credentials matching a track, patient volume worth learning from, and honest supervision. The University verifies every preceptor through its own process before hours begin.
How many hours will a student need from me?
It depends on the course, not the whole degree. Track totals are commonly published at 640 hours (FNP, AGPCNP, PMHNP) or 520 (AGACNP) spread across multiple practicum courses, so an individual course's weekly ask is typically one to three clinic days. You see the specific target before agreeing.
Who handles the affiliation agreement paperwork?
Mostly not you. The agreement runs between your site's administration and Purdue Global, and we shepherd it, getting it to the right signer at your organization and keeping it moving, so hosting a student does not turn you into a contracts project manager.
Can I host students from tracks outside my specialty?
Generally no, and we will not push it. Population and specialty fit is the core matching rule, a psychiatric student needs a mental-health prescriber, an acute-care student needs hospital-credentialed supervision. We match you only to students whose course your practice genuinely serves.
What if I can only host one day a week?
Still tell us. Partial capacity is genuinely useful because students often split hours across more than one preceptor, and a reliable one-day-a-week site can complete a placement that a single overloaded clinician could not. We will be honest about whether your capacity fits a real student's need.
Get matched with a
Purdue Global preceptor
Tell us your track, your city, and your term. We'll come back with a placement plan and a realistic date your affiliation agreement can clear by.