1. Apply
Ten minutes on the form: credential, population, state, the day of the week you could give, mode, and a line about your practice. A coordinator replies within one business day with what is open for that profile or what needs fixing first.
2. Verify once
Upload a CV, your license, your certification and a short practice description. The license is checked on the state board and the certification with its issuing board. Those four documents then serve every program you are approved by.
3. Agreement
Programs place students only under an affiliation agreement with the practice. If yours already holds one it is confirmed; if not, one is drafted in the school's template and sent to whoever signs for your practice. One to two weeks, on the program's clock.
4. Orientation
Ninety minutes, by video, before the first student: the student's log, the two evaluations you sign, how to hand a student a patient without losing the hour, and two teaching methods built for a full clinic day. Not accredited CE.
5. A card, and your answer
One rotation in six fields: program, course, dates, hours, population and the mode the program permits, plus the student's note. Seventy-two hours to say yes or no. Yes releases names both ways.
6. The rotation and the two deposits
The student arrives having read your onboarding list. You teach on your day, they log, you sign the midpoint evaluation and the first half is deposited; you sign the final and the second half follows. A named coordinator is on the rotation throughout.
Where the three weeks go
Almost all of it is the agreement. A program's placement office confirms your documents against its handbook and signs with your practice on its own schedule; a practice that already holds an agreement is approved in days, a large health system with a legal office takes the longer end.
Then the academic calendar takes over. Rotations start in January, May and August, so a nurse approved in October may wait until the new year for a card while one approved in April sees several.