Placing MSN students across Colorado, in every track

Master of Science in Nursing is a single credential with very different clinical requirements underneath it, and the placement you need depends entirely on your track. We treat the whole degree as our territory in Colorado, not one specialty, and students generally fall into two groups.

• Nurse practitioner tracks, where you need a preceptor who delivers direct patient care and holds an active Colorado license: family, psychiatric-mental health, adult-gerontology primary and acute care, pediatric, women's health, and neonatal.
• Non-NP tracks, where you need an experienced mentor in the role rather than a prescriber: nurse educator, nursing informatics, nursing and health-systems leadership, clinical nurse leader, and public or community health.

The two groups do not compete for the same sites or the same hours, so we run two different searches. A quick map of the tracks lives on our MSN specialties guide.

These are the tracks no specialty placement service bothers with, and they are where Colorado's metros actually help you. Your mentor is a working professional in the role, and the practicum is a project or leadership rotation rather than hundreds of patient-care hours.

• Nurse educator: a practicum inside a school of nursing, a hospital staff-development office, or a clinical-education department, common wherever Colorado has nursing programs and teaching hospitals.
• Nursing informatics: a placement on a health-system IT, analytics, or clinical-systems team, concentrated in the Denver and Aurora health corridors where the large systems run their data and electronic-record operations.
• Leadership or administration: a rotation shadowing a nurse executive or operations leader, usually inside a hospital or system head office.
• Clinical nurse leader and public health: care-coordination and unit-leadership roles, or a county or community-health agency placement.

Because these mentors are fewer and more specialized, we start early and cast across several employers rather than counting on one.

Colorado is a full practice authority state, so nurse practitioners can practice and prescribe without a standing physician contract once they clear the state's provisional prescriptive requirements. For a student, the practical effect is a wider pool of independent NP preceptors.

• An experienced NP in Colorado can serve as your preceptor on their own authority, without a supervising physician attached to the arrangement.
• Physicians can still precept NP students, and many do, especially in specialty clinics.
• Full authority sets the supervision frame, but your program still decides who qualifies and how many hours count, so confirm both before you commit.

Licensure specifics should always be checked against the Colorado State Board of Nursing, since board rules change more often than this page.

Colorado's clinical supply is not evenly spread, and knowing that up front saves weeks of guesswork.

• The Front Range corridor from Fort Collins through Denver, Aurora, and Colorado Springs holds most of the health-system informatics, analytics, and leadership sites, plus the deepest bench of NP preceptors.
• Boulder, Pueblo, and Grand Junction anchor smaller regional pools that work well for primary-care NP tracks and educator practicums tied to local nursing programs.
• The rural Eastern Plains and the Western Slope have real clinics but thin specialty coverage, so psychiatric-mental health and acute-care matches there take longer.

We tell you honestly when your county is short on a given specialty and widen the radius before it costs you a term.

There is no single Colorado hour count, because hours attach to your track and your program, not your zip code.

• NP tracks carry the heaviest load. The 2022 National Task Force standards recommend a minimum of 750 direct patient-care hours, national certification requires at least 500 faculty-supervised hours, and accredited programs commonly publish somewhere from about 500 to 750 or more, with many still below 750.
• Non-NP tracks such as educator, informatics, and leadership usually run far lighter, often in the rough range of 100 to 200 practicum hours set by the program.
• Simulation time does not count toward the direct-care minimum.

Confirm your own total against your syllabus, and see our MSN clinical hours explainer for how the pieces fit.

We are independent and we work for students at any university, so the search follows your track and your Colorado timeline rather than a single school's roster.

• Tell us your track, your program's hour requirement, and your county, and we scope realistic sites.
• We approach preceptors and mentors, confirm license and role fit, and hand your program a clean packet to approve.
• Nothing is billed until a match is confirmed and your school signs off. See how it works and cost.

Ready when you are: request a preceptor at the match form and we reply within one business day. We assist with sourcing and coordination; we never guarantee placement or your program's approval.