The Clinical Practicum Coordinator at Loyola New Orleans
The Clinical Practicum Coordinator is the School of Nursing office that turns a student's chosen site into a placement Loyola University New Orleans can approve. Its work covers placement tracking, site contracts, compliance with facility rules and hands-on Exxat help. Knowing where that role begins and ends tells you what to send, when to send it and who else to ask.
Arrive at the office ready
Tell us your course and term, and we will build a complete request.
Four jobs, in Loyola's words
Loyola's Nursing Student Handbook describes the School of Nursing Practicum Coordinator through four duties. The FNP Orientation and Practicum Guide and the Wishlist guide call the same office the Clinical Practicum Coordinator and add a fifth role: technical advisor for Exxat and Prism.
- Tracking placement needs. The office keeps track of which students need sites for which courses and terms.
- Obtaining affiliation agreements. It secures the academic affiliation agreements, the clinical site contracts, that let an organization host Loyola students.
- Tracking compliance. It follows each student's standing against the requirements facilities set.
- Helping with Exxat uploads. Students who get stuck loading documents can ask the office for help.
The office also maintains Loyola's list of hundreds of organizations with active agreements, the same sites that appear on the Explore Clinical Locations map. Requests for those sites are the ones Loyola says it can process quickly.
Who decides what: the coordinator and the other roles
Several Loyola roles touch a placement, and sending each question to the right one saves days of back and forth.
| Question | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| Does Loyola have an agreement with this site, and can one be started? | Clinical Practicum Coordinator |
| Exxat access, uploads or Wishlist mechanics | Clinical Practicum Coordinator, as technical advisor for Exxat and Prism |
| Has a compliance document been accepted? | Exxat APPROVE team review; the coordinator tracks overall compliance |
| An FPCM IV specialty site | FNP Director |
| FNP hours in urgent care, a hospital ward, an ER, a nursing home or a specialty clinic | Graduate Program Director |
| Starting early or extending practicum dates | Faculty of record |
| Whether MSN hours count toward the DNP's 1,000 | DNP Program Director |
| Nurse-Midwifery site assignment | CNM Program Director |
A fuller map of titles and duties is on who does what at Loyola.
Why some health systems insist on the coordinator
With many independent practices, you make the first contact and the coordinator handles the contract afterward. Large systems often reverse that order. Ochsner LSU Health's North Louisiana system accepts graduate nursing requests only through InPlace, keyed in by a school's faculty or coordinator; students cannot log in to that network and are asked not to phone its providers.
LCMC Health's learner page describes the same order: first a confirmed academic affiliation agreement, then learners working through the school's own coordinator. At CHRISTUS Health, the Clinical Education Affiliation Agreement must be signed before the term begins, and a student's faculty advisor identifies a site and contacts the system's academic office. When your target belongs to a system like these, tell the coordinator early and let the request travel through the channel that system names. Each system decides its own capacity, so keep an alternative moving too.
What the coordinator needs from you
Send the office a request it can act on
- The course number and term, for example
NURS G829next spring. - The site's legal name, street address and a contact person.
- The name and title of whoever signs contracts for the organization.
- Your preceptor's name, credentials and the state where they are licensed.
- Whether the site will sign the Standard Loyola Affiliation Agreement or wants its own form.
- Whether the preceptor's employer is a different organization from the site.
Those details mirror what the Exxat Wishlist asks for, so gathering them once serves both. Write from your Loyola email account: the bulletin says it is the only address the university recognizes for official notices, and it keeps your messages tied to your student record.
Timing the office's work
The pace of the coordinator's work depends on the paperwork your site brings. A site already under agreement moves quickly. A new site has to sign the Standard Loyola Affiliation Agreement through an authorized signer, and one that rewrites the agreement or insists on its own form can add several months, according to the FNP guide.
That is why Loyola tells students to allow a full three months or more before the practicum. Bring a new site to the office as soon as a preceptor agrees, not in the week before term, and keep a second option going in case legal review stalls. The bulletin is firm that hours worked before the agreement is fully signed are forfeited. The contract review itself is explained on affiliation agreements.
Keeping compliance off the coordinator's desk
Compliance is the part of the coordinator's job you control most directly. Under the FNP guide, a student with lapsed requirements cannot be registered for the practicum course, and the resulting compliance hold appears in LORA under the Holds tab. An expired flu shot or BLS card can stall a placement that is otherwise ready to go.
Upload items to Required Documents in Exxat well before you need them, watch expiration dates that fall inside the term, and keep your signed FERPA release on file so the School of Nursing can share your records with the site. If the hold appears anyway, fix the item first and then tell the office, since it tracks your standing. Our compliance requirements page lists every item Loyola asks for.
Why Loyola students choose us to work alongside the coordinator
The coordinator's office is set up to process sites; we are set up to find them and get them ready. We locate a preceptor who fits your Loyola course, confirm the site's signer and agreement status, and gather the clinician's CV, license verification and signed agreement form, so the office receives one complete request instead of a string of follow-ups.
We flag health systems that want requests to come from the school, time every step against the three-month window and remain on call should a preceptor leave. Loyola's placement office and faculty hold the approval; what we deliver is a request they can act on at once, complete and in line with Loyola's rules. Start with a short message.
Questions Loyola students ask
Is the Practicum Coordinator the same as the Clinical Practicum Coordinator?
Yes. Loyola's Nursing Student Handbook says School of Nursing Practicum Coordinator, while the FNP guide and the Wishlist guide say Clinical Practicum Coordinator, for the same office: the one that tracks placements, obtains affiliation agreements, tracks compliance and advises on Exxat. Different documents simply use the longer or shorter title.
Will the Clinical Practicum Coordinator find a preceptor for me?
Loyola describes the office's work as tracking placement needs, obtaining affiliation agreements, tracking compliance and helping with Exxat uploads. For NP and DNP students, Loyola's documents place the preceptor search with the student. The office's list of sites under agreement, visible on the Explore Clinical Locations map, is a strong place to begin that search.
How do I contact the Clinical Practicum Coordinator?
Use your Loyola email account, which Loyola treats as your official address, and ask your course faculty or check your practicum guide for the current contact route. Put your name, program, course number and term in the subject line so the office can match your message to your Exxat record without a second exchange.
Who approves an FNP site in urgent care or a hospital?
The Graduate Program Director. The FNP guide sets every FPCM practicum in outpatient primary care, so an urgent care center, hospital ward, emergency department, nursing home or specialty clinic needs that director's sign-off. A specialty site in FPCM IV goes to the FNP Director instead. Ask before you commit hours to either kind of site.
Can the coordinator speed up a site's contract review?
The office can move a site under an existing agreement quickly, but a site's own legal review sets the pace for a new or edited contract. Loyola's FNP guide notes that rewritten or site-drafted contracts can stretch across several months. The lever you hold is time: bring the site forward early and keep a backup in progress.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-25
We check these pages against Loyola's own bulletin, program pages, practicum guides, forms and licensure disclosures. Your plan of study, your practicum guide, your program director and the Clinical Practicum Coordinator have the final word.
Loyola asks you to select your own preceptor and site. We make that the easy part.
Tell us your Loyola program, where you live and which term your next practicum starts. We find preceptors whose patients fit the course, check whether the site already has a Loyola affiliation agreement, and prepare everything your Exxat Wishlist needs.
- Preceptors matched to the course: outpatient primary care for
NURS G823, pediatrics and obstetrics forNURS G829, acute care forNURS G902, psychiatric care forNURS G856 - Preceptor CV, license and Nursys PDF, the Preceptor Agreement and the site's signer details ready for the Wishlist
- In your own community, in Louisiana or any state where Loyola approves your practicum
Start your placement plan
Program, city and term is all we need to begin.