Clinical placement at Azusa Pacific, step by step

The whole path on one page

Graduate placement at APU moves through three phases. You get ready, you secure a site, and then you complete the clinical. Each phase ends in a gate, and a missed gate holds up everything after it.

Several steps below come from the publicly readable MSN Advanced Practice Program Guidelines, which is the 2023-24 edition. The current guidelines, the SON Student Handbook and your syllabus sit behind your APU account and have the final word.

Phase one: get ready before any clinical course

Planning comes first. Under APU's 2023-24 guidelines, a student with no program plan on file is left out of the placement count, and APRN students are held out of advanced health assessment until advising is finished. Advanced pathophysiology, pharmacology and health assessment each need a B- or better before any clinical course begins.

Experience is a gate as well. The MSN APRN tracks admit nurses with a year or more of nursing practice who reside in Southern California, FNP-track students in the BSN-to-DNP pathway must reach 8 months as an RN before year two, and both MSN and DNP students stay in clinical work throughout.

Compliance steps APU lists for advanced practice students

• Review the SON Student Handbook and upload the acknowledgement
• Complete the Student Data Questionnaire
• Complete or update CastleBranch, or Complio at the San Diego campus
• Finish the 2026-27 training modules in Canvas
• Review the COVID-19 standards that clinical facilities set

For Fall 2026 these were due August 1, 2026, and program deadlines can differ. The CastleBranch and Complio guide covers package codes and review times.

Phase two, part one: find and propose a preceptor

APU's BSN-to-DNP FAQ puts the search on the student, with APU's staff, faculty and student placement coordinators in support, and the MSN NP and CNS tracks work as a shared model along the same lines. Finding your own clinical site explains how that split plays out and how to search close to home.

Timing is where plans slip. The 2023-24 guidelines want the placement coordinator to hear about any new preceptor 6-8 weeks ahead of the term, the window APU uses for vetting and for a general liability contract. The same guidelines rank fit for your course level and patients above convenience, and they note that Saturday and evening clinicals are hard to come by, above all in family practice.

Screen the preceptor against APU's preceptor requirements before anyone signs anything. Accepted credentials differ between the NP, PMHNP and CNS courses, and relatives, close friends and colleagues from your own unit are ruled out.

Phase two, part two: from request form to written clearance

1. File one request form per preceptorThe current NP onboarding hub asks students who have secured a preceptor to submit a Graduate Preceptor Request form. PMHNP, Nursing Education and Azusa or Inland Empire NP students each have their own version.
2. The placement team reviews itAPU's Graduate Placement Team contacts you to review and confirm the placement, vets the preceptor and checks that your requirements are current. The placement team page covers offers and the one-week confirmation.
3. An affiliation agreement is put in placeEvery APU clinical site needs one. APU warns this can take time, most of all when the organization holds no current agreement, so affiliation agreements deserve attention early.
4. You receive written clearanceBoth request forms keep you off the site until the Clinical Placement Team signs off, and the 2023-24 guidelines ask for that sign-off as written notice from the placement coordinator.
5. The facility onboards youSome facilities run their own onboarding, through channels such as MyClinicalExchange. When a facility charges for that per student, APU's hub says the School of Nursing receives the invoice, not the student.

Phase three: hours, rotation rules and Medatrax

APU counts 45 clinical hours for each clinical unit. MSN FNP and AGPCNP students carry GNRS 600 for 12 units in total, or 540 hours, and a term of 2-6 units with faculty approval works out to 90-270 hours. Clinical hours by program lists every track, including the places where APU's own figures disagree.

The rotation has its own rules in the 2023-24 guidelines: didactic and clinical courses run together, hours cannot be front-loaded or back-loaded, and no overnight shift right before a clinical day. The rotation rules page covers pauses and incompletes.

Log hours in Medatrax every week. A missed weekly entry can draw an academic warning, and the department chair strips out any hours recorded at an unapproved site. The Medatrax guide shows how to keep the log clean.

Phase three: how APU evaluates your clinical work

Two people grade the clinical: your preceptor and your clinical faculty. APU uses the clinical evaluation and the preceptor's evaluation as minimum-standard instruments, and a score under the standard in any single category sets off a remediation plan built with clinical faculty.

On top of that, OSCEs run in most clinical courses, plus progression OSCEs at the program level. The summative OSCE sits in GNRS 592B for FNP and AGNP students and in GNRS 542 for PNP students, while BSN-to-DNP APRN students take a clinical performance exam in GNRS 618. Assigned iHuman virtual patient cases each come with a fee, and a clinical portfolio opens once 540-765 hours are complete.

The preceptor email you enter on the request form is where APU's end-of-term evaluation lands, so use an inbox the preceptor actually opens. Evaluations and OSCEs goes deeper.

When a placement falls through

APU's 2023-24 guidelines are frank that a clinical placement is not promised. Students left without a site have to begin dropping the course before a third of the semester has passed, and some qualify for a late-drop fee waiver with priority placement the following term. The no-placement drop rule sets out who qualifies.

If a site collapses mid-course and nothing replaces it, APU may offer a clinical incomplete, while no hours survive a failed course. If a preceptor starts to pull back, tell clinical faculty at once, because leaving a site before faculty have tried to repair things costs you the waiver. Keep a second preceptor in view until your first one holds written clearance.

Why APU students choose us for this process

We are specialists in APU's clinical process and work it in APU's own order. We find a preceptor whose credential fits your course at a site close to home in Southern California, then gather what the placement team and the affiliation agreement need: license and credential, the practice's registered name, who signs for it, a contact in the front office and whatever onboarding the site runs.

Before anything is filed, we check whether APU and the site already have an affiliation agreement, so a new one gets the lead time it needs. Written clearance of every site stays with APU's placement staff, and what they receive from us is complete and inside APU's rules from the first submission. Should a preceptor leave mid-term, we remain on call and start lining up a replacement. Your program, home city and first clinical term are enough to begin, using the form below.

Questions APU students ask