Clinicals outside South Florida on FIU's online tracks

What FIU's Clinical Education page allows

The MSN Clinical Education page is the live rule. It names FIU's long-standing clinical area as Monroe, Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, then says students on the online tracks may do clinicals outside it. In the same passage FIU puts finding the clinical site on the student, working alongside the clinical department as it arranges the agreement with the clinical partner. Nothing starts until that agreement is signed.

The online tracks are the AGPCNP (Adult-Gerontology Primary Care NP) and the PNP (Pediatric Primary Care NP), in the MSN and in the online post-graduate certificates. The post-BSN to DNP overview applies the same idea to its online specialties. One wording gap is worth knowing: the DNP Clinical Education page says Pedi and Adult-Gero without the words Primary Care, so DNP students should ask which specialties the distance option covers.

FIU's pages say nothing similar about the hybrid tracks (FNP, PMHNP and AGACNP). Those students lean on the designated clinical department for one-on-one placement help; the split is laid out in online versus hybrid tracks.

Training elsewhere in Florida

A clinic in Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville or Tallahassee sits outside the four home counties but inside the state whose licensing requirements FIU says its programs meet. The Board of Nursing's definitions in rule 64B9-4.001(13) add a point for your search. For a clinical setting inside Florida, a qualified preceptor (the rule lists certified practicing APRNs, physicians with an MD or DO, and dentists) has to hold a Florida license, and the student needs an RN license issued under chapter 464. FIU already asks for a current Florida RN license at admission, as the Florida RN license page explains.

Everything else travels with you: the Preceptor Request Form, the contract, clearance, Typhon logging and a weekday primary care schedule. The real change is distance. FIU's MSN FAQ warns that one to three trips to campus each semester may be required on these tracks, so a student near Pensacola should budget for drives to the Modesto A. Maidique Campus. Our guide to preceptors across the rest of Florida covers the regions themselves.

Site visits when the clinic is far from Miami

FIU's 2022 preceptor manual has the clinical faculty set visits up with the preceptor, watch you work on two or more separate clinical days while both of you are there, and write up a site visit evaluation. The current handbook adds calls and in-person contact with preceptors whenever needed through the term. Neither document explains how that works for a site well outside South Florida.

Ask your clinical faculty early how the observed days will happen, and tell a prospective preceptor at the first conversation that two faculty visits are part of the rotation. The faculty member has to fit two observed days into the preceptor's clinic calendar, so share the preceptor's days and times with your clinical faculty as soon as they are set. The mechanics of both evaluations and visits are on the evaluations and site visits page.

Why FIU students far from Miami choose us

We search where you live. For an online-track student in Orlando, Jacksonville or beyond, we look for adult and older-adult primary care clinicians to precept NGR 6201L, or pediatric primary care clinicians for NGR 6301L, within reach of home. We check that each holds the license the setting requires and collect each item the Preceptor Request Form requires: preceptor, facility, specialty, address, license, days and times.

We also raise the distance questions before anyone commits. We find out early if the site has an FIU contract already, flag the lead time when it does not, and make sure the out-of-state and site-visit questions have gone to the Office of Clinical Education. The approval itself belongs to FIU's Office of Clinical Education and your faculty; our part is to hand them a request with nothing missing and nothing outside FIU's rules. Tell us your city in the form below.