How NPhours works, step by step
Six steps from application to the second deposit. Your part is under an hour of work and one 90-minute orientation. The rest is program approval, which runs one to two weeks, and the rotation itself, which runs a term.
- Step 01
Apply
Ten minutes on the application: credential, population, state, hours a week, 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.
- Step 02
Verify once
You upload a CV, your license, your certification and a short practice description. Program relations checks the license on the state board and the certification with the board that issued it. Those four documents are then used for every program you are approved by, so you never repeat this step.
- Step 03
Agreement
Programs place students only under an affiliation agreement with the practice. If your practice already holds one with the program, it is confirmed; if not, one is drafted in the school's own template and sent to whoever signs for your practice. One to two weeks, on the program's clock.
- Step 04
Orientation
Ninety minutes, video, on your own time before the first student. The log the student keeps, the midpoint and final evaluations you sign, how to give a student a patient without losing the hour, and two teaching methods that fit a full clinic.
- Step 05
A card, and your answer
One rotation described in six fields, with the student's own note underneath. You have 72 hours to say yes or no. Saying yes releases names both ways and puts the two evaluation dates on your schedule.
- Step 06
The rotation and the two deposits
The student arrives with your onboarding list already read. You teach, they log, you sign the midpoint evaluation and the first half is deposited. You sign the final and the second half follows. Your coordinator is on the rotation throughout.
Where the time goes
Almost all of the three weeks is step three. A program's placement office has to confirm your documents against its handbook and sign an agreement with your practice, and it does that on its own schedule. Preceptors whose practice already holds an agreement with a program are approved in days. Those at large health systems, where a legal office reads every agreement, should expect the longer end.
Steps five and six depend on the academic calendar. Rotations start in January, May and August, so a preceptor approved in October may wait until the new year for a card while one approved in April sees several. A coordinator can tell you what last term looked like for a profile like yours, and the scheduling page explains blocks, half-blocks and blackout weeks.
What each side does
Teach. Keep the student in patient care in the course's population. Sign two evaluations on the dates the schedule shows. Tell your coordinator early if something is not working.
Read your onboarding list before day one. Log every encounter in the program's system within 48 hours. Come with the questions written down.
Approve the preceptor, sign the agreement, define the permitted mode, review the log, and release the evaluation forms on time.
Matching, paperwork, the orientation, the setup for video rotations, the coordinator, and the two deposits. Never patient care, and never a student unsupervised.
