Dallas-Fort Worth for UTRGV nurse practitioner students
More than 28% of Texans live in the 19 counties of Dallas-Fort Worth and Texoma. This guide is for PMHNP certificate and DNP students who live in the Metroplex, and for FNP students with family nearby. The hospitals publish detailed rules, several of them putting their own employees first, and this guide matches them to UTRGV's courses.
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Tell us your UTRGV program and where you live. A placement advisor replies with preceptor and site options in your community that fit your UTRGV course.
Nineteen counties from Sherman to Stephenville
This region joins the North Central Texas Council of Governments' 16 counties with the three Texoma counties. Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton form the core; Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Hunt, Wise and Hood ring them; Grayson, Cooke and Fannin sit on the Red River side, and Erath, Navarro, Palo Pinto and Somervell to the south and west. Together they held 8,927,141 people on July 1, 2025, 28.2% of Texas. Dallas (1,329,491) and Fort Worth (1,028,117) lead, and Arlington, Plano, Irving, Garland, Frisco, McKinney, Grand Prairie and Denton each top 169,000.
Dallas is roughly 490 road miles from the Edinburg campus. FNP classes still meet in Edinburg each week, so any FNP plan for North Texas starts with your course coordinator; UTRGV has no published rule on distance. PMHNP certificate students living in the Metroplex train close to home, and DNP students here need a local site UTRGV approves for the project.
Hospital rules: employees and partners first
Several North Texas systems rank their own staff ahead of outside schools. Each line is that system's own published rule.
| System | Its own rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| UT Southwestern Medical Center | APRN requests go only through the online APP Student Precept Placement Request, in three yearly windows. Priority runs UTSW employees, then Children's, Parkland and Texas Health employees, then Texas public universities, then private DFW schools, then schools with an existing agreement. | Live page and guideline |
| Texas Health Resources | Training needs a signed affiliation agreement, and the student secures the preceptor by contacting the department at a THR location. For non-employees, a new agreement reaches governance review only on a preceptor's SBAR business case, signed by the entity president or CNO and tied to workforce needs and hiring potential. | Archived copy, April 2026 |
| Parkland Health (Level I trauma) | Places no students directly; placement questions go to the student's school. | Live page |
| Children's Health, Dallas and Plano | A Hosting Department submits each affiliated student's request. Its nursing page adds no affiliations except for current employees, and its primary care clinic no longer takes NP preceptorships. | Live pages |
| Baylor Scott & White Health | Its allied health page, written for fields outside nursing and medicine, requires an affiliation agreement with a school certified by the State of Texas; no NP-specific page was found. | Live page |
| Medical City Healthcare (HCA) | No student link on its home page. | Archived copy, July 2026 |
UTRGV is a Texas public university, the third tier in UT Southwestern's order. At Texas Health, the case for a new agreement starts with a THR clinician willing to write it.
CCPS, health centers and shortage designations
CCPS, the Centralized Clinical Placement System, is coordinated across North and Central Texas by the DFW Hospital Council Foundation. Its users must be Texas BON-approved nursing programs holding hospital affiliation agreements, so a CCPS request is the school's to make.
HRSA lists 61 active health center sites here from 13 organizations. Healing Hands Ministries runs 12, mostly in Dallas County, and the Dallas County Hospital District 10. Health Services of North Texas covers Denton, Plano and Wylie; the Hunt County agency serves Greenville, Commerce and Farmersville; Ellis County Coalition for Health Options has Waxahachie and Ennis; North Texas Area Community Health Centers works in Fort Worth and Arlington; and single sites sit in Stephenville and Corsicana.
Mental health designations reach all 19 counties: Cooke, Erath, Fannin, Hood, Palo Pinto, Parker, Somervell and Wise are county-wide geographic shortage areas, the other 11 are designated for low-income residents, and Palo Pinto scores 18. Primary care is patchier: Navarro and Parker are geographic shortage areas, seven counties have low-income designations, Dallas and Tarrant are designated by tract with central Dallas scoring 18, and eight counties, mostly suburban, have none. USDA counts seven nonmetro counties, 3.3% of the people, and CMS lists 115 hospitals, 15 of them psychiatric.
Which North Texas sites suit which UTRGV course
A preceptor in Plano or Fort Worth counts only once UTRGV approves the site. The FNP syllabi make you responsible for lining one up: take a site from UTRGV's approved list in Brightspace, or put a new one forward on the Clinical Request Form and budget one to three months for UTRGV's agreement.
NURS 6612(224 hours) leading intoNURS 6613(336): primary care with children and adults, where an all-ages family practice or health center can carry both 7-week rotations.NURS 6347: two master's-prepared NPs in two different practices, one student per preceptor.NURS 6311: rural primary care in Erath, Navarro, Palo Pinto, Cooke or Fannin.NURS 6476andNURS 6620: board certification is the gate (ABPN for psychiatrists more than a year out of residency, ANCC for PMHNPs), the site cannot be your employer, and your clinical faculty clears it before hour one.- DNP project courses: a site UTRGV approves, with affiliation agreement forms and a preceptor who is a physician or DNP-prepared APRN; see DNP project hours.
Why Metroplex UTRGV students choose us
Because UT Southwestern, Texas Health and Children's Health each favor employees, our search leans on the places that decide for themselves: independent practices, specialty groups and health centers across the Metroplex, beginning with anything already on UTRGV's approved list. We confirm each preceptor meets your course's rules, time the request to UTRGV's agreement window and any hospital deadline, and prepare the preceptor details UTRGV's request form and agreement call for. UTRGV's steps are on the placement process; the form is below.
Questions UTRGV students ask
Can a UTRGV NP student apply to UT Southwestern?
Yes, through one door: the online precept placement request run by UT Southwestern's advanced practice office. For a fall rotation you apply between January 1 and March 31 and hear back by April 30. Texas public universities sit third in its priority order, behind UTSW employees and employees of its partner systems.
Will Parkland place me if I contact it directly?
No. Parkland's placement page says it places no students itself and points every inquiry back to the student's own school. If a Parkland clinician agrees to precept you, the arrangement still runs through UTRGV and an agreement between the school and Parkland.
What is an SBAR at Texas Health Resources?
It is a short business case. According to an archived copy of Texas Health's academic partnerships page, a new agreement for a student who is not a THR employee goes to governance review only when the preceptor submits a complete SBAR, signed by the entity president or CNO and based on workforce needs and hiring potential.
Is Children's Health an option for pediatric hours in NURS 6612?
Its pages say the primary care clinic has stopped hosting NP preceptorships, with no date to restart, and its nursing page adds affiliations only for current employees. For the children's share of NURS 6612, an all-ages family practice or health center is the steadier North Texas choice.
Where do UTRGV DNP students in North Texas carry out the project?
At an approved site. The DNP syllabi list the paperwork (affiliation agreement forms, a preceptor data sheet, a preceptor agreement) and name physicians and DNP-prepared APRNs as preceptors, but not who finds the site. A Metroplex clinic or unit works if it will sign in time, and at the large systems their own rules come first.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-27
We check these pages against UTRGV's own catalog, course syllabi, School of Nursing pages and Texas Board of Nursing rules. Your course faculty and the School of Nursing have the final word.
From the approved list or a brand-new site, we find the preceptor who fits.
Tell us your UTRGV program, where you live and when your next clinical course starts. We line up a willing preceptor who fits the course and UTRGV's rules, and hand you the details the Clinical Request Form, the affiliation agreement and the preceptor agreement ask for, well before the semester.
- Family practice preceptors for
NURS 6612andNURS 6613, and two NP sites forNURS 6347 - Board-certified psychiatric preceptors for
NURS 6476andNURS 6620, in your home state - Across the Valley and Texas, from McAllen and Brownsville to San Antonio, Houston and beyond
- A replacement lined up fast if a preceptor drops
Start your placement plan
Program, city and start date is all we need to begin.