NP preceptors in West Memphis, Jonesboro and east Arkansas

Arkansas and UofM's state rules

For a UofM MSN or certificate student, the first question about an Arkansas practicum is whether the state is open to LCON. Here UofM's sources line up: Arkansas is one of the states the Office of Community Partnerships and Practice names as open to LCON, and the NP licensure disclosures answer Yes for Arkansas.

Arkansas's own board is harder to pin down. Our state research found nothing in ASBN's rules or guidance requiring an outside program to get permission for clinical-only placements; the rules that mention outside schools deal with launching a new Arkansas program. Nobody at ASBN has confirmed that reading, so before we fix a site in place we ask you to check with LCON.

However UofM approaches your placement, an Arkansas site still needs an approved preceptor agreement form before day one and a place in the schedule you give clinical faculty by Monday of the term's second week.

Where east Arkansas clinicians practice

These organizations illustrate where the region's clinicians work, summarized from their own public pages. None is offered here as a place that hosts UofM students.

• Baptist Memorial-Crittenden and other Baptist hospitals in eastern Arkansas. The only published student route is Baptist's system-wide graduate preceptorship application, which wants three months' notice and each preceptor named.
• NEA Baptist in Jonesboro, where the same Baptist graduate application is likewise the only route found.
• St. Bernards in Jonesboro, whose public nursing pages cover careers, externships and residencies; no NP student page was found.
• East Arkansas Family Health Center, a Crittenden County community health center that HRSA designates on the primary care side and the mental health side alike.

Because Baptist's form expects a named preceptor at submission, we secure the preceptor's commitment before any application is prepared.

Jonesboro, West Memphis and the trip to campus

Distance shapes an east Arkansas student's program in two ways. Day to day, LCON leaves transportation to clinical sites with the student and pays for none of it, so a Jonesboro student weighing a Memphis site is weighing a regular drive across the river.

NP students also owe the program a handful of campus days: no more than three intensive visits, each scheduled with six months' warning or more, and the January 2027 visit is one no NP student can miss. Where they take place is not specified on UofM's pages, so read each notice closely; the campus intensives guide gathers what UofM publishes.

Hours cannot be squeezed into a short stretch either. No course lets you compress its clinical hours into fewer than seven weeks, and clinical days stop for university breaks unless faculty arrange otherwise, so a practicum here needs a preceptor who can offer steady days across the term.