A placement is a signed thing, not a hope.
Practicumalliance ratifies preceptor and field placements: for the professional in a nursing, behavioral-health or field-experience program, and for the university or health system that must place a cohort of them. Every placement is ratified under one accord: the site, the named supervisor, the hours, the dates and the paperwork, agreed before the first day and minuted every week until the last.
Est. 2018 · matches ratified across 43 states
Since 2018, under one accord, with the council's countersignature on every shortlist.
The parties.
Three parties sign every accord. A fourth may be named.
The professional
Enrolled in a program that requires precepted hours or a field placement, and able to attend the hours agreed.
The site
A practice, hospital, agency or department, with a named preceptor or field instructor whose license the program accepts.
The Alliance
Which finds, countersigns and files. The clinical and behavioral councils rule; the secretaries keep the record.
The institution
Where a university, health system or agency places a cohort, it is named as a party and receives the weekly minute.
The register of preceptors and sites.
The files secretary keeps it in three indexes, state, license and specialty, and marks against every site the programs it has already signed with. Three clauses cover what can be ratified.
Nursing
- Family NPFNP
- Psychiatric-mental health NPPMHNP
- Adult-gerontology acute and primary careAGACNP, AGPCNP
- Women's health and pediatricsWHNP, PNP
- Doctor of nursing practice residencyDNP
- Leadership, education, informaticsMSN
- Baccalaureate completion practicumRN-to-BSN
Behavioral health
- Clinical mental health counselingCMHC
- Marriage and family therapyMFT
- Psychology practicumMS, PsyD
Field experience
- Social work field placementMSW, BSW
- Public health applied practiceMPH
- Healthcare administration internshipMHA
- Human services internshipBS
Ratification, in five clauses.
Your part is the license and the hours. Everything else is the Alliance's, in this order and no other.
Application
Program, state, term and hours, checked against the handbook's supervision clause before anything else.
Register check
The files secretary draws sites already signed with the program, or with a program of the same shape.
Countersign
The council confirms license, setting, hours and supervision. Only then is a shortlist offered.
Ratification
Three signatures, then the school's affiliation office receives its packet in the template it prescribes.
The minute
Compliance dated past the final week, hours banked weekly, the next date always on the calendar.
Terms for institutions.
A university, health system or agency that places its professionals through the Alliance signs one accord for the cohort. These are its terms.
- One named signatory answers for every placement in the cohort, from application to the closing evaluation.
- Affiliation and preceptor packets are delivered in the institution's own templates and countersigned before the term opens.
- Compliance is closed before day one: screenings, titers and certifications all carry dates beyond the final week.
- The weekly minute reaches the institution's placement office: hours banked, filings landed, next dates.
- A substitution clause covers a preceptor who leaves or a site that withdraws, with hours carried forward.
Cohorts are ratified by term. A program that opens thirty placements in January receives thirty countersigned shortlists in November, and its affiliation office receives thirty packets it does not have to reformat.
The signatories.
Two councils and four secretaries. All six, and how a countersignature is given.
Dr. Yusuf A.
Countersigns every shortlist. Acute, adult-gerontology and primary-care rotations; the council's word on whether a site's hours are the hours a program will count.
Dr. Lena M.
Psychiatric, counseling and psychology placements. Reads the supervision clause of every program handbook before a behavioral site is offered.
Tomás E.
Holds the member register of preceptors and field instructors, by state, by license and by specialty, and records which programs each has signed with before.
Testimony.
Members, after the accord closed. Twelve, by program.
The accord named the site, the supervisor and the hours before anything was signed. My program's placement office approved the packet without a single query, which had never happened to anyone in my cohort.
A field instructor who could sign my school's learning contract was the whole problem. The register already listed two. The agreement was ratified inside three weeks.
A hospital that had already signed with my program gave me the acute-care hours. The compliance secretary had my titers dated past the final week before orientation, so the unit never sent me home.
Clauses in question.
What does the accord actually say?
Four things, in writing, before a placement is ratified: the site and the named preceptor or field instructor, the hours available and the dates they run, the supervision the program requires and the license that satisfies it, and who countersigns what. A placement is offered only after the council has confirmed all four against the program's own handbook.
Who signs it?
The professional, the site, and the Alliance. Where a university, health system or agency places its people through the accord, the institution is named as a party and receives the weekly minute. The school's affiliation office receives the agreement in its own template, whether or not it is a party.
Which programs can be ratified?
Nurse practitioner tracks (family, psychiatric-mental health, adult-gerontology, women's health, pediatrics), DNP residency hours, MSN leadership, education and informatics practicum, RN-to-BSN hours, MSW and BSW field placement, clinical mental health and marriage-and-family practicum and internship, psychology practicum, and applied practice for MPH, MHA and human services programs.
What happens if the site changes its mind mid-term?
The accord carries a substitution clause. If a preceptor leaves or a site withdraws, the files secretary offers a replacement from the register with the same license and supervision, the hours already banked are carried forward, and the program is notified in writing the same week.
How is compliance handled?
By the compliance secretary, against the site's own list rather than a generic one. Screenings, titers, certifications and background checks are dated past the final week of the placement from the day the accord is signed, so a document can never expire in the middle of a rotation.
What will the Alliance not ratify?
A grade, a particular preceptor by name, a site a program's handbook forbids, or any placement where the supervision rule cannot be met. Those are stated before signing, not discovered after.
Sign the accord.
Program, state, term. A signatory reads the handbook first and replies within one working day. Cohorts are signed on the institutional form.
Received
Received. The council takes your handbook first. A signatory follows inside one working day with the registered sites that fit your state.
Practicumalliance · the placement accord · sheet 1 / 1