APU clinicals across Southern California, region by region
APU's nurse practitioner students must live in Southern California, and their clinicals happen close to home. These guides cover the 16 regions where APU students live and train, from the San Gabriel Valley around the Azusa campus to San Diego, Bakersfield and the Central Coast.
Get your placement plan
Tell us your APU program and where you live. A placement advisor replies with the preceptor and site options that fit your APU course.
What stays the same in every region
Three APU rules follow you wherever you train. Every site needs an affiliation agreement with APU, you submit a Graduate Preceptor Request form for each preceptor, and you may not report to the site until APU's placement team clears it in writing. A California preceptor must hold an active California license in their own profession, and the duties are set out in an agreement among the site, the preceptor and APU.
What changes by region is the landscape: which health systems operate there, how they take students, and where the community clinics and shortage areas are. Each guide below starts from those facts. For the rules that apply statewide, read California NP practice and preceptors and how Southern California systems take students.
APU's home region
Los Angeles County
Inland Empire and the deserts
Orange County and San Diego
Ventura, Kern and the Central Coast
Questions APU students ask
Do APU nurse practitioner students have to live in Southern California?
Yes. APU's catalog says applicants to its MSN APRN programs must reside in Southern California, and clinicals are completed close to home. APU's guidelines add that fit for your level and population comes before distance, so a commute of an hour or two is common.
Which region guide should I read?
Read the guide for the region where you live and would train. If you live near a border, such as Pomona or Corona, read both neighboring guides, since the health systems and clinics you could reach span both.
Do big Southern California health systems take APU students?
The systems that publish a process all require a school affiliation agreement first, and several route requests through the school rather than the student. None of their public pages names APU, so each placement has to be confirmed through APU's placement team.
Can I do APU clinicals outside California?
APU's MSN APRN programs require Southern California residence, and its licensure disclosures confirm California only. California's rules now allow out-of-state preceptorships with a preceptor licensed in that state, but APU's own approval and agreements decide what is possible.
Last checked 2026-09-25
We check these pages against APU's own catalog and program pages. Your syllabus, your clinical faculty and APU's student placement coordinators have the final word.
APU says the clinical site and preceptor are yours to find. We make that the easy part.
Tell us your APU program, where you live in Southern California and when your next clinical term starts. We find preceptors who fit the course and prepare what APU and the site need before anything is approved.
- Preceptors matched to the course: primary care for
GNRS 600, pediatrics for the PNP courses, psychiatric care for PMHNP - Credentials, license and site details ready for APU's review and the affiliation agreement
- Close to home, from the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire to San Diego
Start your placement plan
Program, city and term is all we need to begin.