Herzing NP Specialties: All 6 Tracks, Certificates, and the DNP

Each Herzing MSN NP track is delivered as online coursework plus a hands-on practicum you complete under a preceptor at a site Herzing has approved. The right preceptor has to match both your specialty and the patient population that specialty serves, so the search is genuinely different for each track. A psychiatric panel, a pediatric clinic, and an acute-care unit are not interchangeable, and Herzing approves the site against your specialty, not just any clinical setting. Here is what each one covers and where to go for placement help.

Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP)

The FNP is the broadest primary-care track, preparing you to care for patients across the lifespan from pediatrics to older adults. Because it spans every age group, FNP students often need a preceptor whose practice sees a wide mix of patients, or sometimes more than one site to cover the full population. It carries one of the larger primary-care practicums, so lining up a site early matters. See the FNP preceptor page for placement help.

Psychiatric-Mental Health NP (PMHNP)

The PMHNP track prepares you to assess, diagnose, and manage mental health and psychiatric conditions across the lifespan. It includes a focused immersion experience built into the practicum, which makes scheduling and preceptor availability especially tight. Psychiatric preceptors can be scarce in some areas, so an early, specialty-matched search is the difference between a clean timeline and a scramble. Start at the PMHNP preceptor page.

Adult-Gerontology Primary Care NP (AGPCNP)

AGPCNP focuses on primary care for adolescents through older adults, with an emphasis on chronic disease management and healthy aging. Like the psychiatric track, it includes an immersion component built into the practicum. We match you with a primary-care preceptor whose adult and geriatric panel fits the track rather than a general clinic that skews young. See the AGPCNP preceptor page.

Adult-Gerontology Acute Care NP (AGACNP)

AGACNP prepares you for the acute and critical care of adult and older-adult patients, typically in hospital, specialty, or intensive settings. Acute-care preceptors and qualifying clinical sites are a narrower pool than primary care, and hospital credentialing can add lead time, which is exactly why starting early helps. See the AGACNP preceptor page.

Pediatric NP - Primary Care (PNP-PC)

The PNP-PC track focuses on primary care for infants, children, and adolescents. You will need a preceptor in a pediatric primary-care setting, which can be limited outside larger group practices and pediatric clinics. We search for a pediatric site that meets Herzing's approval standards in your area. See the PNP preceptor page.

Women's Health NP (WHNP)

The WHNP track prepares you to provide primary and reproductive health care for women across the lifespan. Required practicum hours for this track are not publicly confirmed, so we confirm the exact requirement against your current Herzing program rather than quote a number. We then match you with a women's-health preceptor in your state. See the WHNP preceptor page.

If you already hold an MSN and want to add or change your population focus, Herzing offers post-master's APRN certificates in all six tracks above. Certificate students complete a precepted practicum just like degree-seeking students, so the same specialty-and-state preceptor match applies to you. The number of required hours depends on your prior coursework and the gaps it leaves, which is one more reason to confirm requirements early rather than assume.

Herzing also offers a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), available as a BSN-to-DNP and an MSN-to-DNP. The DNP NP tracks build on a master's-level specialty and add doctoral-level practice hours plus a DNP Practice Project. If you are on a doctoral path, your placement plan needs to account for those additional practice hours on top of the specialty practicum, so we plan the preceptor search with the full doctoral requirement in view from the start.

Practicum hours are not the same across specialties, and that shapes how far ahead you should plan. Two of the tracks build in a full-time immersion block that has to be scheduled as a continuous stretch, which is harder to slot into a working preceptor's calendar than spread-out hours. One track's hours are not publicly confirmed at all. We treat every figure as provisional: hours commonly published for these programs are a starting point, and we confirm the exact requirement against your current Herzing handbook before we plan your search.

For the full side-by-side numbers by track, including how the immersion blocks fit into your timeline, see clinical hours. To understand how Herzing's placement support and its conditional Clinical Placement Pledge actually work, see clinical placement, and for the deadlines that decide whether that backstop is even available to you, see clinical deadlines.