Southeastern's MSN Family Nurse Practitioner program, from first course to Family Health III

Admission and the gates before your first clinical

Entry requires an unencumbered Louisiana RN license and a cumulative undergraduate GPA of at least 2.7, per the 2026-27 catalog. Once enrolled, you complete background checks, drug and alcohol screening and the program's health requirements at your own expense, and CPR certification has to stay current through every practicum course.

A second gate stands in front of NURS 6820. Before any clinical or practicum course, the catalog wants proof of a year working as an RN in a setting that fits the FNP specialty. Under the consortium's student handbook, your Louisiana license must also stay unencumbered from admission to graduation, and the graduate coordinator must hear from you right away about any change.

Costs arrive in pieces. Beyond tuition, the catalog lists a professional fee charged each semester of coursework, fees for proctored online testing and a laboratory fee on each Family Health course. Because the catalog entries leave the amounts out, get today's numbers from the Graduate Nursing Office before you build a budget.

Three Family Health courses, 750 hours

Every Family Health course combines three hours of didactic work with a semester's worth of precepted practice, and each one centers on a different population. Family Health I asks for 200 hours with children and child-bearing women, Family Health II 275 hours with adults, and Family Health III 275 hours with adults and older adults. That makes three preceptor searches, not one.

The catalog adds the three to 750, yet Southeastern's majors page for the concentration still shows 600 clinical hours. The catalog is the newer and more detailed document, so plan for 750 and raise any mismatch with your advisor. The FNP hours guide breaks the total down further.

Our own arithmetic, not a Southeastern figure: a fall or spring semester runs about 16 weeks, so 200 hours works out to roughly 12 or 13 hours a week and 275 hours to about 17, before holidays or a late start. If a clinical course lands in a summer semester, which ran June 3 to August 3 in 2026, the same hours squeeze into about nine weeks. None of these totals can include time your employer is paying you for.

Choosing preceptors for the FNP courses

Southeastern's graduate students choose their own preceptors in collaboration with course faculty, who approve each one, and the graduate coordinator reviews every choice before an hour counts. The consortium also keeps a list of past and current preceptors it can recommend. Choosing your preceptor has the exact wording. Each Family Health course moves through the same four steps.

1. Match the setting to the coursePediatrics and women's health for Family Health I, adult primary care for II, adults and older adults for III.
2. Bring the name to course facultyDiscuss your choice, confirm the preceptor is willing and understands the NP role, then wait for faculty approval and the graduate coordinator's review.
3. Check the facility contractThe university signs facility agreements, separate from your preceptor letter. Look up the facility's status in the clinical tracking system; if no agreement exists, securing one can run from several weeks to a few months.
4. Complete the fileBefore day one the Graduate Nursing Office needs the agency contract, the preceptor's CV or resume from the last two years, a letter of agreement signed by you, faculty and preceptor, and your health and training records.

Large Louisiana systems add their own terms. Ochsner Health accepts graduate nursing requests only from schools through its InPlace platform and asks students not to contact its clinicians. LCMC Health says it runs no preceptor matching and needs an affiliation agreement first. North Oaks in Hammond takes requests through a web form, but an archived copy of its student page says it offers no pediatric rotations.