NP clinicals on the Treasure Coast for NSU students
Cleveland Clinic runs four hospitals on the Treasure Coast, and it accepts placement requests only from a school. A student cannot open that door alone, which makes a preceptor you find in a practice, health center or county clinic the route that keeps an NSU clinical in St. Lucie, Martin, Indian River or Okeechobee County. Get that name to your clinical coordinator a full two semesters before each clinical course; a student who names no one is placed by the coordinator anywhere inside a 150-mile radius of home.
Get your placement plan
Tell us your NSU program and your home ZIP area. A placement advisor replies with preceptor and site options near you that fit your NSU course.
Four counties between Palm Beach and the Space Coast
St. Lucie County holds Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, its seat. Martin County's seat is Stuart, with Indiantown inland. Indian River County runs from Vero Beach, the seat, to Sebastian and Fellsmere. Federal statisticians pair St. Lucie and Martin as the Port St. Lucie metro and treat Indian River as its own. Okeechobee County, inland to the west, completes the region the Florida Center for Nursing calls the Southeast, which it groups with Palm Beach.
NSU has no campus on the Treasure Coast. The nearest is Palm Beach, where FNP and AGACNP students travel for their two- and four-day intensives, so a Treasure Coast clinical plan has to leave room for those trips in semesters when a preceptor also expects you weekly. FSU's College of Medicine runs a regional campus in Fort Pierce.
Cleveland Clinic's rule: the school makes the request
Cleveland Clinic Martin Health (Martin North and Martin South), Cleveland Clinic Tradition and Cleveland Clinic Indian River all follow Cleveland Clinic Florida's onboarding page, the same one that governs its Weston hospital. Its terms are strict:
- An affiliation agreement between Cleveland Clinic and the school must be fully executed first.
- Only an academic representative of the school can arrange a placement; when a student asks directly, Cleveland Clinic checks with the school.
- APRN students are directed to Cleveland Clinic Florida's Office of Advanced Practice, which does not publish its APRN steps.
- Onboarding covers a school-attested background check (seven years of criminal history plus registries), TB within 12 months, MMR, varicella, hepatitis B, Tdap, flu, BLS where the department needs it, and compliance courses.
- New affiliation agreements are weighed on the school's distance from the Florida facilities, workforce needs, expected volume and accreditation, and usually run five years.
Cleveland Clinic publishes an ACEMAPP-based graduate nursing process for Ohio; whether any of it applies in Florida is unclear. What you can do is tell your clinical coordinator early if a Cleveland Clinic clinician is willing to precept you. Whether NSU holds an agreement with Cleveland Clinic is not public.
Contacting a Cleveland Clinic hospital to request your own rotation will not create a placement there: the request has to come from your school.
Practices, health centers and VA clinics from Stuart to Sebastian
Outside the hospitals, HRSA lists Treasure Coast Community Health in Fellsmere, Whole Family Health Center and Florida Community Health Centers as federally qualified health centers serving the area. Each county also has its own Department of Health office (St. Lucie, Martin and Indian River). For the FNP primary-care clinicals (NSG 5549, NSG 5559), these centers and private family practices are the main primary-care options, and for NSG 5589 pediatrics you will be looking at pediatric practices, since no children's hospital appears in public sources for this area.
Shortage designations help you read the map. St. Lucie has a population shortage area, Martin has a geographic one around Indiantown, and Indian River has one marked proposed for withdrawal; Indiantown and Fellsmere count as rural cities. The West Palm Beach VA runs clinics in Fort Pierce, Port St. Lucie, Stuart and Vero Beach, open to NP trainees only through school affiliation agreements.
AGACNP students have the hardest search, because Cleveland Clinic, the main published hospital option here, routes everything through the school. Palm Beach County to the south is worth adding, since Tenet's hospitals there ask for a signed preceptor agreement instead; the Palm Beach County guide explains it. PMHNP students look to private psychiatric practices and community behavioral health programs.
Reading the 150-mile rule from Port St. Lucie
Leave the preceptor question open and the clinical coordinator chooses for you, anywhere inside 150 miles of the home ZIP code on file, and NSU does not renegotiate the choice. Around Port St. Lucie that radius stretches south past Miami and north past Orlando. From Vero Beach it takes in Orlando easily and still reaches Miami-Dade.
Because NSU clinical hours start with the course's didactic work and continue weekly, a Sebastian student placed in Broward would carry a long weekly round trip. The 150-mile rule page details the placement, and the own preceptor vs NSU placement comparison helps you choose.
Florida's rule for a Treasure Coast preceptor
The license rule is statewide: an APRN, MD, DO or dentist licensed by Florida may precept you, and you must be licensed as an RN under chapter 464. The fine print is in the Florida preceptor rule guide, including why a physician-protocol NP qualifies just as an autonomous primary-care NP does.
Why Treasure Coast students choose us
When the hospital route runs through the school, the preceptor you find yourself matters more. We search practices and health centers from Stuart to Sebastian, match each one to your NSU course, and assemble everything your clinical coordinator will want to see months before your notice falls due. The coordinator approves; our job is making that approval straightforward, then staying on call through the semester.
Questions NSU students ask
Can I ask a Cleveland Clinic Martin Health NP to precept me?
You can ask a clinician whether they are willing, but the placement itself must be arranged by NSU. Cleveland Clinic Florida accepts requests only from a school's academic representative after an affiliation agreement is executed, and APRN requests go to its Office of Advanced Practice. Pass the clinician's details to your clinical coordinator early; NSU's agreements are not published.
Where do AGACNP students on the Treasure Coast find acute-care preceptors?
Cleveland Clinic's four Treasure Coast hospitals run on school-arranged placements. Widening the search to Palm Beach County helps, because Tenet's Palm Beach Health Network asks the student to arrive with a named preceptor and a signed agreement. Either way, give your clinical coordinator the details two semesters before NSG 5629.
Does this guide cover Okeechobee County?
Yes, as part of the same Southeast workforce region. Okeechobee sits inland, so a 150-mile placement radius drawn from there reaches both coasts and the Orlando area. Health centers and the county's Department of Health office are the obvious first places to ask about primary-care precepting.
Are the Treasure Coast VA clinics open to NP students?
The Fort Pierce, Port St. Lucie, Stuart and Vero Beach clinics belong to the West Palm Beach VA, whose training page says internships are arranged mainly through schools with VA academic affiliations. The school contacts the VA's education office, and the VA sets its own trainee numbers. Raise any VA offer with your clinical coordinator first.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-25
We check these pages against NSU's own handbook, catalog and program pages. The graduate clinical guide, your course in Canvas, your clinical coordinator and your program director have the final word.
NSU lets you name your own preceptor. We make sure you have one, close to home and in time.
Tell us your NSU program, your home ZIP area and when your next clinical course starts. We find preceptors who fit the course and have everything ready for your clinical coordinator well before the two-semester notice.
- Preceptors matched to the course: primary care for FNP, acute care for AGACNP, psychiatric care for PMHNP, a practice site for DNP project hours
- Named early enough for NSU's two-semester notice, with license, credentials and site details ready for the coordinator
- Close to your home ZIP code, with clinic days we plan around your work schedule
Start your placement plan
Program, ZIP area and start term is all we need to begin.