How Florida's APRN rules shape who precepts you

Protocol practice, Florida's default

Unless registered as autonomous, a Florida APRN works within an established protocol kept on site, per s. 464.012. In a group practice the protocol runs with at least one physician in the group, who keeps supervision for directing the specific course of medical treatment. AANP rates Florida's practice environment as restricted, and the Board of Nursing expects the protocol to be filed where the APRN practices.

Prescribing is capped too. Most Schedule II prescriptions stop at a 7-day supply, with psychiatric drugs written by psychiatric nurses as the exception, and psychiatric controlled substances for anyone under 18 are reserved to psychiatric nurses.

For you, protocol practice means your preceptor's decisions sit inside a physician framework, and yours sit inside your preceptor's: Keiser's practicum policy bars students from diagnosing, setting a treatment plan, treating or discharging without the preceptor's explicit approval or direct supervision.

What the two models mean for your practicum

Keiser's FNP practicums center on primary care across the lifespan, and primary care is the whole of an autonomous APRN's scope. An autonomous family NP running a family medicine or general pediatrics practice matches Keiser's preferred preceptor, a master's-prepared FNP, and in a practice they own can make the hosting decision themselves.

Protocol practices are just as usable. A family NP under protocol qualifies under Keiser's rules, and because Keiser accepts MDs and DOs, the protocol physician can be a second possible preceptor in the same office. The statute also has a teaching clause: the 3,000 hours an APRN logs toward autonomous registration can include clinical instructional hours taught as faculty in a clinical setting for a graduate NP program. Whether volunteer precepting counts is a question for the Board of Nursing.

Licenses your preceptor holds

A Florida APRN license comes from Florida alone. The Nurse Licensure Compact, in force here since January 19, 2018, covers RN and LPN licenses, and Florida has not joined the separate APRN Compact. An NP precepting you in a Florida clinic therefore holds a Florida APRN license on top of a Florida or multistate RN license.

Behind that license sit the Board's requirements: national certification, a master's degree for NPs who graduated on or after October 1, 1998, and proof of malpractice coverage or an exemption. The preceptor's license and certification details travel with the Preceptor/Mentor Information Form so Keiser's Program Director can check them. Students' own license questions are on the Florida state page.

LINE, and the bills that stalled

The LINE Fund, created in 2022, is a state match for nursing programs that partner with health care employers, and its statute lists recruiting clinical preceptors among the permitted uses. Its eligibility measures are prelicensure ones, and Keiser appears, marked ICUF, on the Department of Education's LINE lists for 2024-25 and 2025-26.

Two bills aimed at nursing education died in the Senate's Fiscal Policy committee: SB 526 in 2025, which would have had the Florida Center for Nursing develop graduate nursing preceptorship standards, and SB 254, a 2026 nursing education programs bill. In Congress, H.R. 392, the PRECEPT Nurses Act, is still only a proposal.