Doing FNU clinical hours where you already work

What FNU publishes for MSN and PGC students

The catalog doesn't give a flat yes or no. It tells students to check "their course syllabus and program guidelines" to see whether clinical hours can be done at a workplace, and adds that the facility's own employment policy has a say too (FNU Catalog, Summer 2026).

Those syllabi and guidelines sit in Canvas rather than on FNU's public pages, so that is where your track's answer lives. Read the guidelines for your clinical courses, then ask your Regional Clinical Faculty member (RCF) before you ask your manager. Raising it with the RCF first saves you from building a plan around a site that can't be used.

Where it is allowed, the condition is the same in every track: FNU requires "separation between their employment role and their student role." The rest of this page is about what that looks like on a real schedule.

Keeping your job and your student role apart

The catalog backs the separation rule with a hard line: practicing in an advanced-practice role without preceptor supervision, while not licensed for it, means "automatic dismissal." At your own workplace, colleagues may be used to you working on your own, which is exactly where that line can blur.

Settle these with your manager, preceptor and RCF before the first shift

• Which hours are paid RN work and which are FNU student hours, and how the schedule keeps them from overlapping
• Who your FNU-credentialed preceptor is for each student hour, and what happens on days they're out
• Whether your employer lets staff train as students in their own unit, or only in another department
• How you'll keep your Clinical Log fully de-identified, as FNU requires
• What your badge, title and documentation show during student hours

During student hours, the catalog says you are not an employee of FNU or the clinical site and are not covered by workers' compensation. That is one more reason to keep the two roles on clearly separate time.

Your workplace still goes through full approval

Being on staff doesn't skip a step. You still submit a Clinical Site Approval Form through the Community Map, your RCF still has to accept it, and Clinical Credentialing still needs a signed affiliation agreement, proof of the site's professional liability insurance and a fully credentialed preceptor.

At a larger employer, the person who signs an affiliation agreement may not be your unit manager. Find out who does before you submit, and expect the agreement to run on its own clock; Clinical Credentialing explains why it takes months.

Your preceptor at work has to meet FNU's rules for your track too. A supervisor can precept you if they qualify under the preceptor requirements, but a family member can't, whoever employs them.

Will one workplace cover your visit counts?

Often it won't on its own. Every MSN and PGC track needs 750 hours plus track-specific visits. FNP students need newborn, pediatric, adult, geriatric, gynecologic, antepartum, mental health and men's health visits. WHNP students need 300 gynecologic visits and antepartum, postpartum and primary care visits. PMHNP students need child, adult, geriatric, crisis and substance use visits, and midwifery students need 40 births with at least eight in a hospital.

A single unit may not span all of that. The catalog expects students to use more than one site when one can't supply the volume, within a cap of four sites in most tracks, and warns this may mean relocating, "possibly out of state." Treat your workplace as one piece of the clinical hours plan, not the whole of it.

Owning part of the practice changes the answer

If you hold an ownership stake in your workplace, it's out for MSN and PGC clinicals. The catalog bars sites "where they have a stake in ownership," along with sites owned or run by a family or household member, even when a non-relative there would precept you.

The same logic catches a family business you happen to work for. DNP students have a narrower rule: no site owned or run by a first-degree family member.

If you're unsure whether a partnership, a shared-ownership group or a family link counts, describe it plainly to your RCF before you submit a CSAF. Adjusting the plan at that stage is far easier than after Clinical Credentialing has started work on an agreement with the site.

DNP students: the workplace is the default

The DNP turns the question around. FNU encourages DNP students "to complete their clinical hours where they work," and the catalog describes projects done "ideally at the site of APRN employment." Your 500 DNP hours come from leading a rapid-cycle quality-improvement project at that site.

Your project site still needs a CSAF, submitted through the DNP850 Canvas course, before Clinical Credentialing reviews it. If your employer doesn't require an affiliation agreement, you follow its requirements instead of FNU's compliance list. You, a site sponsor and a site mentor sign a Sponsor/Mentor agreement no later than Week 8 of the term before DNP851. The mentor needs a master's degree or higher; the sponsor has no set education level. The DNP practice hours page has the course-by-course detail.

Building around a workplace plan

If your job covers part of your hours, we search for the site that fills the gaps: a pediatric practice for an FNP whose job is adults only, say, or a hospital birth site for a midwifery student who works in a birth center. Each CSAF's site and preceptor details get prepared with you as well, so the second site isn't a scramble. Tell us what your job already covers and we start from the gaps.

Whether your workplace qualifies is for your syllabus, your employer and your RCF to settle, and Clinical Credentialing approves every site. We test each plan against the separation and ownership rules first and flag any risk before you submit it.