GNRS 518 and GNRS 663: APU's nurse educator practicums

Two practicums with two different jobs

The two courses ask different things of you. GNRS 518 keeps you at the bedside or in the clinic, caring for patients in a practice area you pick. GNRS 663 moves you into the educator's role, working alongside a nurse educator. Plan them as two separate searches with two different kinds of preceptor.

The 225-hour total blends one printed figure and one computed one. APU prints 135 hours for GNRS 663, and the 2 clinical units of GNRS 518 work out to 90 at APU's 45 hours per unit. Our clinical hours overview sets this beside APU's other programs.

GNRS 518: direct care in the area you plan to teach

GNRS 518 Supervised Practicum in Health Care keeps educators clinically grounded. It pairs 1 classroom unit with 2 clinical units, 90 hours at APU's rate, spent in direct patient care in an area of practice you choose. That choice is worth making on purpose: picking the specialty you hope to teach gives your later educator practicum a consistent clinical thread.

APU's public sources do not name the preceptor credential for GNRS 518, so the syllabus and course faculty set that rule. Because it is hands-on patient care, expect the site to want the usual clinical file: license, background check, immunizations and training modules, all tracked in CastleBranch, where Nursing Education has its own package code.

If the natural site is the hospital or clinic where you already work, ask course faculty how APU's employer rules, written for the advanced practice tracks, carry over to GNRS 518. The preceptor requirements page sets out those rules in full.

GNRS 663: the 135-hour nurse educator capstone

GNRS 663 Nurse Educator Practicum is practicum from start to finish: 3 units, none of them in the classroom, and APU prints the hours as 135. It runs under a nurse educator preceptor, and the catalog recommends taking it after GNRS 660, GNRS 661 and GNRS 662, so plan it for late in the program.

The preceptor is the defining piece. The catalog calls for a nurse educator, and APU publishes no further public rule on degree, years of experience or setting. Nurse educators teach in academic nursing programs and in hospital education and staff development roles, and course faculty confirm whether a particular educator and setting meet the course objectives.

Two other groups take this course. ELM graduates heading into education must bring a year's worth of RN clinical experience, or its equivalent, to GNRS 663. BSN to DNP students on the Nurse Faculty Loan Program option complete four courses from the GNRS 660 to GNRS 664 range, GNRS 663 included, with the same 135 hours; the BSN to DNP page covers that path.

Who finds the site: APU's own wording

APU's Nursing Education practicum site form promises the School of Nursing's help but leaves the final responsibility for a suitable preceptor and setting with you. That fits the model APU uses across its graduate programs, where placement staff assist and the student brings a site and preceptor forward. Our guide to finding your own clinical site explains the broader model.

The same form sets a second condition. Any site you request depends either on an existing APU contract with that agency or on the agency agreeing to begin one. A nursing school or hospital education department that has never worked with APU can still host you once an affiliation agreement is signed, so bring new sites forward early.

Nursing Education has its own request form on the student hub, separate from the NP and PMHNP forms, and the site form collects a city and state from anyone based beyond Los Angeles.

Practicums outside Southern California

Nursing Education is one of two APU MSN programs open to applicants wherever they live. The MSN in Nursing Education runs asynchronously online, with a hybrid option that places some core courses at Azusa, the Inland Empire, Monrovia or San Diego, and admission asks for a nursing license that is active and unencumbered in whichever state hosts your practicum.

That license rule is the key to a distant practicum: your license has to match the practicum's state, not only the state where you live. APU's distance-education limits matter too. APU is not accepting distance-program applicants who live in 14 states plus Washington, DC, and warns that the list is updated frequently; the state authorization page lists them.

A site far from APU's campuses may never have signed an APU contract, so allow extra time for the agency to review and sign one. APU's recent NP guidelines ask for six to eight weeks' notice of a new preceptor, and a new agency in another state may need longer than that.

Planning the practicum timeline

The Post-Master's Certificate in Nursing Education is 21 units online and carries the same two practicums for the same 225 hours. On either path, work backward from GNRS 663: name the nurse educator you hope to work with at least a term ahead, confirm whether the agency already has an APU contract, and keep your CastleBranch file current.

APU admits to this program on a rolling basis and closes applications roughly three weeks ahead of each term, so a student can be admitted and start within weeks. The practicums sit later in the plan, which gives you the early terms to line up both sites instead of starting the search in the practicum term itself.

If one of your two sites is new to APU, start with that one. A new agreement takes time to negotiate, and the site cannot host you until it is signed.

How we help nursing education students

We search for both practicum sites with the course in mind: a direct-care setting in the specialty you want to teach for GNRS 518, and a qualified nurse educator for the GNRS 663 capstone, as close to home as the right fit allows.

If a preceptor's availability changes partway through a term, we find a replacement and prepare the new request, so your hours keep moving.

For each site we gather the details APU's Nursing Education form and the affiliation agreement need, including the agency's legal name, the person who signs its contracts and the preceptor's credentials, and we find out early whether APU already has a contract there. The School of Nursing approves every site; our part is a request it can act on right away. Read how it works, then send your program and target term through the form below.

Questions APU students ask