NP preceptors in Flagstaff and northern Arizona
Northern Arizona has capable preceptors, but they are scattered across small towns and long highways, and the region's largest hospital system takes student requests school to school. For most NAU nurse practitioner students, the quickest workable placement is a family or psychiatric clinician in an independent, rural or community practice near home, brought to NAU on the Green Form with the site's approval already secured. That is the placement our desk builds.
Find a preceptor near your town
Tell us your NAU track, your town and your next practicum. Your placement advisor maps the practices within reach.
Where nurse practitioner preceptors practice in the north
Think of the region as a chain of towns rather than one market: Flagstaff, Sedona and the Verde Valley, Prescott, Kingman, Page, Winslow, Show Low, and the Navajo Nation communities around Tuba City. Nurse practitioners and physicians here work in owner-run family practices, rural health clinics, community health centers, tribal health organizations, behavioral health agencies and hospital-owned outpatient offices.
An FNP student needs a practice that sees every age group. NAU's 2022-23 guidelines recommend roughly 100 pediatric hours and 100 women's health hours inside the 780 total. A small-town family clinic that sees infants, prenatal patients and grandparents in one morning often covers more of that mix than a larger adult-only office in town. The FNP hour mix breaks the split down.
PMHNP students look for psychiatric settings instead: community behavioral health agencies, integrated clinics and psychiatric practices. Because the catalog flags NUR 680 for in-person engagement, check any telehealth-heavy arrangement with your program coordinator before you commit to it.
Northern Arizona Healthcare's published student process
Northern Arizona Healthcare (NAH) operates Flagstaff Medical Center and Verde Valley Medical Center. Its November 2024 onboarding instructions for students and instructors describe a school-to-system route:
- School agreement firstNo rotation is approved until the student's school and NAH hold a current legal agreement. NAH says a brand-new school partnership can take several months, and the legal agreement alone anywhere from about a week to four months.
- NAH Education coordinatesIts education team is the go-between for students and hospital departments, and it asks students to hold off contacting a department until it gives clearance.
- Onboarding in myClinicalExchangeNAH works through myClinicalExchange. Its checklist covers a background check, a drug screen, American Heart Association BLS, NAH learning modules and immunizations.
- Compliance done four weeks outEvery requirement must be complete four weeks or more ahead of the start date. Items sent inside two weeks lose priority, and nobody begins until NAH Student Services gives authorization.
NAU publishes no list of the organizations it holds agreements with, so only NAU's Clinical Placement Coordinator can tell you where NAH stands. If a clinician there is your goal, the Green Form's assistance box is the right tool: you name the site, and NAU's staff carry the request down NAH's route.
Tuba City, tribal health and the Indian Health Service
Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation, a tribal organization in the western Navajo Nation, invites graduate-level students and residents on its learning opportunities page and directs scheduling questions to its Academic Dean. Whether an NAU practicum can run there is worked out between the site, NAU's placement staff and the FNP Program Coordinator, who approves every preceptor.
The Indian Health Service's student pages describe programs built for its own workforce: an extern program for health professions students, including its scholarship recipients, and a scholarship covering nurse practitioner study in exchange for later service. Neither page sets out a way for NP students from outside schools to request a rotation, so an IHS facility is a question to raise with NAU's staff rather than a cold request.
One detail of Arizona's preceptor rule matters in federal clinics. A clinician employed by the federal government may hold an unencumbered RN or physician license from any U.S. state, while other preceptors need a license where they practice. NAU's preceptor requirements set out the whole rule, and rural and tribal clinicals covers the wider setting.
Independent and rural practices: where your own arrangement fits
Smaller practices are where NAU's shared model works most directly: you identify the preceptor, NAU reviews and approves. In an owner-run office, the clinician who agrees to teach you often runs the business too, so the site's approval can come in the same conversation, and you can mark the Green Form box that says the site has approved the placement.
NAU still needs a signed affiliation agreement with that site, including one where you already work. Its 2021-22 Green Form describes an administrative contact who receives the agreement and routes it for signature, frequently the office manager rather than the preceptor, and it notes that agreements run from a few days to a few months. Naming that person correctly keeps the paperwork from sitting on a desk in a two-provider clinic. See NAU affiliation agreements.
Before anything is submitted, screen the clinician against the preceptor rule NAU applies, and have their CV, license and certification in hand, since NAU asks the preceptor for all three.
Distance, overnight stays and the practicum calendar
NAU's 2022-23 FNP guidelines are candid about travel. The program tries to limit it, yet overnight accommodations may be needed, and students cover their own transportation and housing. The same guidelines add that a student who turns down an offered placement because of travel preference is not owed a different one.
Across a region this wide, that clause is the practical case for arranging a preceptor in or near your own town. The calendar adds weight to it: clinical days fall on weekdays inside the term, because weekend, holiday and break clinicals are off the table unless the FNP Program Coordinator signs off beforehand. Across the summer, fall and spring practicums, a long commute repeats on every clinical day for three straight terms.
Why northern Arizona students choose us
We search outward from your town, not from Flagstaff alone. FNP students get family practices that treat every age, with enough children and women's health visits to meet NAU's recommended split; PMHNP students get psychiatric settings where care happens in person on every clinical day.
Every candidate is checked against Arizona's preceptor rule as NAU applies it, including the license allowance for federal clinicians. We gather the CV, license and certification, confirm the site agrees to host you, identify who signs the affiliation agreement, and hand you a Green Form ready to submit well ahead of the cutoff. We plan summer, fall and spring together and keep watch over each placement, ready to find a successor should a preceptor bow out partway through a term.
Each stage is described on how it works. To begin, send your town, your track and the practicum coming up next through the form on this page.
Questions NAU students ask
How do I ask about a rotation at Flagstaff Medical Center?
Flagstaff Medical Center belongs to Northern Arizona Healthcare, which handles student requests through its education team once a school-level agreement is in place, then onboards students in myClinicalExchange. List the site on your Green Form and tick the box asking for help; NAU's Clinical Placement Coordinator knows whether an agreement exists.
Do NAU nurse practitioner students have to come to the Flagstaff campus?
NAU lists the MS Advanced Practice and both NP certificates as online, and no public NAU page names an on-campus intensive for FNP students. PMHNP is different: the catalog marks NUR 680 as requiring in-person engagement, without saying where or how often that happens. Your program coordinator has the current answer for your cohort.
Can my preceptor practice across the line in New Mexico or Utah?
No NAU source rules on graduate clinicals outside Arizona, so raise it with your program coordinator first. Both states set their own conditions: New Mexico expects on-site preceptors to be able to practice as APRNs there, and Utah asks out-of-state programs to show approvals and use preceptors who hold a Utah or compact-state license. See New Mexico and Utah.
Can a physician be my preceptor if no nurse practitioner is nearby?
Yes. Arizona's rule as NAU applies it accepts a physician with an unencumbered license, at least a year of clinical experience and a practice population comparable to yours, and NAU's 2021-22 Green Form listed MD and DO among preceptor credentials. The FNP Program Coordinator approves every preceptor.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-27
We check these pages against Northern Arizona University's own catalog, program pages and published nursing documents. Your program coordinator and course faculty have the final word.
- Northern Arizona University FNP Clinical Guidelines, AY 2022-23 (archived)
- Northern Arizona University FNP Clinical Guidelines, AY 2021-22, with the earlier Green Form (archived)
- Northern Arizona Healthcare, Student/Instructor Onboarding Instructions, 2024 (archived)
- Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation, Learning Opportunities
- Indian Health Service, nursing student opportunities (archived)
NAU welcomes a preceptor you arrange. We arrange one close to home.
Tell us your NAU track, your town and your next practicum. We line up preceptors who fit the course and Arizona's preceptor rule, confirm the site's approval, and gather the CV, license and certification the Green Form needs, well before NAU's cutoff.
- Preceptors matched to the course: all-ages family primary care for FNP, psychiatric settings for PMHNP
- License, experience and certification checked against the rule NAU applies, before the Green Form goes in
- All three FNP practicums planned together, near home instead of a long drive away
Start your placement plan
Track, town and next practicum is all we need to begin.