Placing MSN students across every track in Virginia

Your MSN is one degree with many tracks, and the practicum attached to it is not one size. What you need in Virginia depends entirely on your track, so confirm your own program's required total before anything else.

• Nurse practitioner tracks: the 2022 National Task Force standards recommend at least 750 direct patient-care hours for each NP track, while AANP and ANCC certification requires a minimum of 500 faculty-supervised hours. Accredited programs commonly publish totals from about 500 to 750 or more, and many sit below 750. Simulation does not count.
• Educator, informatics, leadership, and clinical nurse leader tracks: a much smaller practicum, commonly about 100 to 200 hours, set by each program.

We work from your program's clinical handbook, not a blanket figure. See MSN clinical hours for how the totals break down, and confirm your number with your school.

Most MSN students in Virginia are on an NP track, and each one needs a board-certified nurse practitioner or a physician who practices in the same population focus and holds a Virginia license. We source direct-care preceptors across the full range of NP tracks, not one specialty alone:

• Family, for primary care across the lifespan
• Psychiatric-mental health
• Adult-gerontology primary care and adult-gerontology acute care
• Pediatric primary and acute care
• Women's health and neonatal

Deep, single-specialty searches can get competitive, but the Virginia MSN search always begins with matching your track to a preceptor licensed and practicing here. Browse MSN specialties to see how the tracks differ.

Not every MSN leads to a prescriber role, and these tracks are where a broad placement desk matters most, because no single-specialty service covers them. They use an experienced mentor in the role rather than a physician, and they carry far fewer hours.

• Nurse educator: practicum in a school of nursing, a hospital staff-development unit, or a clinical-education department, mentored by an experienced educator.
• Nursing informatics: practicum with a health-system IT, analytics, or clinical-systems team, mentored by a practicing informaticist.
• Nursing and health-systems leadership or administration: practicum shadowing a nurse executive or operations leader.
• Clinical nurse leader: practicum in care coordination and unit-level leadership.
• Public and community health: practicum with a health department or community organization.

If you are on one of these tracks, tell us the setting your program wants and we will match a mentor to it.

Virginia's clinical and academic map is uneven, and knowing where each setting concentrates saves weeks of searching.

• Northern Virginia, from Arlington and Alexandria out to Fairfax and Loudoun, is dense with health-system offices, which helps informatics and leadership placements.
• Richmond and the capital region hold a major academic medical center and several systems, good for direct-care and administrative practicum alike.
• Hampton Roads, including Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Newport News, is a large coastal care market.
• Charlottesville and Roanoke anchor academic and regional care in the center and southwest.
• Rural southwest Virginia and the Eastern Shore have the thinnest supply, especially for psychiatric-mental health and specialty preceptors.

Educator practicum tends to follow the universities and community colleges, while informatics and executive-shadowing roles cluster in the larger metros.

Virginia is a restricted-practice state under the AANP State Practice Environment, and that mainly affects the NP tracks rather than the non-NP ones. It shapes who can serve as your supervising or collaborating provider, so it is worth understanding before the search starts.

• A nurse practitioner who has not yet reached autonomous practice works under a written practice agreement with a patient care team physician, which frames the preceptor relationship for students.
• Virginia offers a pathway to autonomous practice: a nurse practitioner can apply after attesting to the equivalent of three years and roughly 5,400 hours of full-time clinical experience, a threshold the state reduced from its earlier five-year rule.
• Non-NP tracks are not prescribing, so their mentor is defined by the role, an educator, informaticist, executive, or clinical nurse leader, rather than by prescriptive authority.

We factor this in when we choose a preceptor, and we recommend confirming the current rule with the Virginia Board of Nursing.

We are an independent service, we work with students at any university, and we never guarantee placement or a school's approval of any preceptor or site. What we do is the legwork: we learn your track, your hours, and your term, then source a matched preceptor or mentor and help move the paperwork.

• Tell us your program, track, and target term.
• We confirm your required hours and the setting your school expects.
• We source a licensed, track-matched preceptor or mentor in your part of Virginia.
• We help package the affiliation and preceptor documents for your school's review.

See how it works and our cost page, then reach the desk or start a request. Nothing is billed until a match is confirmed and your school signs off.