Pediatric Primary Care NP (PNP-PC) Preceptor Placement for Herzing Students

Herzing's MSN Pediatric Primary Care Nurse Practitioner program is built so you complete the coursework 100% online and then complete your clinical practicum in person, in a real pediatric setting. The graduate NP curriculum is 48 credits at the MSN level, and the precepted practicum is where you demonstrate entry-level pediatric primary care competencies before you graduate.

This program is commonly published as requiring 585 clinical hours; we confirm the exact requirement against your current Herzing handbook, because hours are tied to your start term and track and can change. Treat that number as the planning figure, not a guarantee. The full per-track hours breakdown for every Herzing NP specialty lives on our clinical hours page.

The thing that surprises a lot of students: those hours have to be supervised by a preceptor who fits the pediatric primary care scope, at a site Herzing signs off on. A general adult clinic or a single urgent-care shadowing arrangement will not satisfy a PNP-PC practicum. The match between specialty, setting, and preceptor credentials is exactly what Herzing reviews, and exactly what we set up in advance.

For a PNP-PC practicum, your preceptor needs to practice in pediatric primary care and be credentialed to supervise a nurse practitioner student. In practice that means one of the following:

• A board-certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner — Primary Care (PNP-PC / CPNP-PC), which is the cleanest match to your population focus.
• A pediatric primary-care provider who delivers the kind of care you need logged — well-child and acute pediatric primary care — and holds the appropriate licensure and certification to precept an NP student.
• In some arrangements, a Family Nurse Practitioner or a pediatrician (MD/DO) who practices primary-care pediatrics, where the patient panel and supervision genuinely cover the peds primary-care competencies.

The constant across all of these is that the preceptor and the site have to be Herzing-approved. Herzing requires the clinical application to include the preceptor's CV and a signed preceptor agreement, and the preceptor's scope has to line up with your population focus. We screen for that fit up front, so the person we put in front of you is genuinely approvable rather than someone you have to walk back later. A Family Nurse Practitioner preceptor can be a fit in the right setting; our FNP preceptor page covers how those cross-population matches work.

A PNP-PC practicum is about the day-to-day of primary care for kids, not hospital-based acute or critical care (that is the AGACNP world — see AGACNP preceptor if you are in that track). Your hours should give you depth in two big areas.

Well-child and preventive care

Routine well-child visits across the pediatric age range, growth and developmental screening, immunizations and anticipatory guidance, newborn-through-adolescent health maintenance, and counseling families on nutrition, safety, and behavior. This is the backbone of primary-care pediatrics, and it is what a strong preceptor panel will give you a lot of.

Acute and chronic primary care for kids

Common pediatric acute complaints — respiratory infections, ear infections, fevers, rashes, GI issues — plus the ongoing management of chronic conditions seen in primary care, such as asthma, ADHD, and allergies. You want a site where you actually see this volume and variety, because the practicum is designed so you see a range of pediatric patients, not the same three presentations on repeat.

Pediatric primary-care hours belong in outpatient settings where children are the patient population. The most common Herzing-approvable peds settings include:

• Pediatric primary care and general pediatrics offices.
• Family medicine practices with a meaningful pediatric panel.
• Community health centers, FQHCs, and school-based health clinics serving kids.
• Pediatric urgent care, where it complements (rather than replaces) primary-care continuity hours.

The right setting matters as much as the right preceptor. A site that mostly sees adults will not give a PNP-PC student the well-child and pediatric acute volume the practicum is built around, and Herzing reviews the site as well as the preceptor. When we source a match, we are looking at the whole picture — preceptor scope, patient population, and whether the location works for you. If you want to start from geography, our preceptor near me page explains how state and distance factor in.

Here is the honest version of how Herzing's model works, because it is the whole reason this service exists. Herzing is student-first: you are expressly encouraged to take an active role in finding your own clinical site and preceptor. Herzing supports you with a Clinical Placement Advisor for guidance and a master's-prepared Clinical Coordinator for coaching and additional site leads, and it provides an approved-site fallback list if your own outreach falls short.

Herzing also has the APRN Clinical Placement Pledge, a conditional, deadline-gated promise to step in and secure a placement if you have completed every required step and still cannot secure one yourself. It is a real backstop — and it only applies if you follow the process, hit the deadlines, and start early enough, with every site and preceptor Herzing-approved. We explain the full Pledge and its exact conditions on our clinical placement page, and the deadline timeline on clinical deadlines.

That is the gap we close. Pediatric primary-care preceptors are in shorter supply than adult or family-medicine ones, so students who wait often find the conditional backstop kicks in late or not at all. We identify a qualified, Herzing-approvable PNP-PC preceptor in your specialty and state early — before the deadline window closes — and help you assemble what the clinical application needs, including the preceptor's CV and a signed preceptor agreement. You will still complete your own background check and immunization clearance and use your program's clinical tracking system; those run through Herzing. We get the right preceptor lined up so you are clearing Herzing's own requirements on time instead of gambling on the gap. See how it works for the step-by-step.