Athens and northeast Georgia: clinical placements for Augusta University NP students
Athens is home to Augusta University's regional nursing campus, and the 12 counties around it grew 13 percent from 2020 to 2025, the fastest of the Georgia regions in these guides. An NP student here meets Piedmont's request windows, an unconfirmed St. Mary's process and MedLink Georgia's clinic network. Whether or not your program helps with placement, we match each Augusta University clinical course to a willing preceptor in these counties.
Get your placement plan
Tell us your Augusta University program and where you live. A placement advisor replies with preceptor and site options in your community that fit your Augusta University course.
The region in brief
The Northeast Georgia Regional Commission takes in Barrow, Clarke, Elbert, Greene, Jackson, Jasper, Madison, Morgan, Newton, Oconee, Oglethorpe and Walton counties. Census estimates count 742,631 residents in July 2025, up from 657,308 at the 2020 base. Athens-Clarke County, at 129,921, is the largest; Winder, Braselton, Covington, Loganville, Jefferson and Monroe are the next biggest towns.
Downtown Athens is roughly 100 driving miles from downtown Augusta; Elberton, at about 85, is the nearest town in the region. Under the USDA's 2023 codes, Barrow, Newton, Walton, Morgan and Jasper sit inside a metro area of more than a million people, while Elbert, Greene and Jackson are the only nonmetro counties, with 18.9 percent of residents.
Augusta University's Athens campus
The College of Nursing describes two campuses: its main campus in Augusta and a regional campus in Athens, in the Kellett Building on Barnett Shoals Road, which the college also labels the Green Acres Center. Its history dates the Athens campus to 1974, when the Medical College of Georgia opened it.
Athens teaches prelicensure students: both the BSN and the Clinical Nurse Leader master's run on the two campuses, and an accelerated BSN once offered there no longer admits students. See BSN clinicals and the Clinical Nurse Leader program.
The DNP nurse practitioner tracks work differently. FNP, AGACNP, PNP and PMHNP coursework is mostly online, with the MEGAI campus intensive for three of the four, so an NP student in Watkinsville follows the same plan as one in Savannah. What keeps that student in Georgia is the residence rule: NP and post-graduate certificate students live in Georgia or South Carolina so instructors can visit them, their preceptors and their sites. The Georgia and South Carolina rule explains it.
Hospital systems and their student pages
| System | Hospitals in the region | What its student pages say |
|---|---|---|
| Piedmont Healthcare | Piedmont Athens Regional; Piedmont Walton (Monroe); Piedmont Newton (Covington) | ACEMAPP credentialing for every student; request windows in August (spring), February (summer) and April (fall) on an archived page; compliance 10 days before the start; its older 2021 guidelines say Piedmont assigns preceptors |
| St. Mary's Health Care System (Trinity Health) | St. Mary's Hospital (Athens); St. Mary's Good Samaritan (Greensboro) | No St. Mary's student page could be found; a search summary credits it with ACEMAPP, requests six weeks ahead and advanced practice students arranging their own preceptor, all unconfirmed |
| Northeast Georgia Health System | NGMC Barrow (Winder) | ACEMAPP page lists advanced practice rotations without steps; its fixed dates and no-prearranging rule cover undergraduates |
Piedmont's older guidelines also want an affiliation agreement and a certificate of insurance on file before any student rotates. Augusta University does not publish a list of its agreements, so ask your course faculty early which of these hospitals are open to your course. Clinical agreements covers why lead time matters.
Health centers and shortage areas, county by county
HRSA lists 27 health center service sites in the region. MedLink Georgia runs 18 of them, in Athens, Bowman, Colbert, Commerce, Danielsville, Jefferson, Lexington, Monroe, Watkinsville and Winder. Athens Model Neighborhood Health Center has four sites in Athens and Watkinsville, Oconee Valley Healthcare four in Greensboro and Madison, and Four Corners Primary Care one in Hoschton. Four sites are school-based and one is mobile; Jasper and Newton counties have none.
For primary care, Elbert County's low-income designation carries the top HRSA score here, 21, with Clarke at 20. Greene, Jasper, Madison, Barrow and Oglethorpe hold low-income designations too, several now proposed for withdrawal, and Jasper and Morgan are whole-county geographic shortage areas. Jackson, Newton, Oconee and Walton have no geographic or population designation.
Mental health shortages reach further. Newton is the only county not designated in full as a geographic mental health shortage area, and one catchment named for Advantage Behavioral Health Systems spans ten of them, which weighs most on PMHNP students.
The four NP tracks in northeast Georgia
| Track and courses | What the courses cover | Where to look in this region |
|---|---|---|
FNP: NURS 8312, NURS 8315, NURS 8318 | Adults in primary care; infants, children and adolescents; older adults and their families | MedLink Georgia and Athens Model Neighborhood sites, family practices in Oconee, Jackson and Barrow |
PNP: NURS 8322, NURS 8325, NURS 8328 | Pediatric primary care across three terms | Pediatric practices in Athens, Braselton and Winder, plus school-based health center sites |
AGACNP: NURS 8332, NURS 8335, NURS 8338 | Adult and older adult acute care, up to complex and rapidly changing needs | Piedmont Athens Regional, St. Mary's, NGMC Barrow, Piedmont Walton and Piedmont Newton |
PMHNP: NURS 8342, NURS 8345, NURS 8348 | Psychiatric care, including a child or adolescent group and an adult psychotherapy group | Outpatient psychiatric and counseling practices in Athens and the ten-county shortage catchment |
Every track: NURS 9192 | The 240-hour final practicum beside a preceptor | A strong earlier site or a new one that fits your plans |
One Georgia licensing point travels with every track here: your nursing license has to be Georgian or multistate, and Georgia's Board of Nursing wants clinical teaching of APRN students done by a nurse carrying Georgia APRN authorization. Georgia NP practice covers the protocol agreements local preceptors work under.
Why Athens-area students come to us
We start from your course number and your address, not a generic list. Your placement advisor combs Clarke, Oconee, Jackson and the rest of the region for a preceptor whose patient mix suits the course, checks the site against Augusta University's published rules and Georgia's licensing rules, and assembles the paperwork your instructors and the host site expect before the term opens. That help holds no matter how your program approaches placement, and should a preceptor leave partway through a term, a successor search opens straight away. The steps are on how it works; the form below starts yours.
Questions Augusta University students ask
Does living near the Athens campus change how my NP clinicals work?
No. The Athens campus teaches the BSN and Clinical Nurse Leader programs, while the DNP nurse practitioner tracks run mostly online with the same four clinical courses wherever you live in Georgia or South Carolina. Augusta University publishes nothing Athens-specific about NP clinicals; your course faculty can answer the details.
Can I do clinical hours at Piedmont Athens Regional?
Possibly. Piedmont routes every student through ACEMAPP, takes requests in set windows each term, and its older guidelines require a school agreement and proof of insurance before a rotation. Those same guidelines say Piedmont assigns preceptors. Check with your course faculty that an agreement is in place for your course before you plan around it.
I live in Covington or Monroe. Which guide is mine?
This one. Newton and Walton counties belong to the Northeast Georgia commission even though they sit in the Atlanta metro area. Newton has no HRSA health center site and no primary care or mental health designation, so private practices and Piedmont Newton carry more weight there; the metro Atlanta guide covers the counties next door.
Where can a PMHNP student get group experience around Athens?
PMHNP Practice II and III want two kinds of group work, one with children or adolescents and one adult psychotherapy group. With 11 of 12 counties designated mental health shortage areas, group programs are fewer than the need, so we look at outpatient psychiatric practices, counseling groups and behavioral health settings across Athens and the surrounding catchment.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-27
We check these pages against Augusta University's own catalog, program plans, DNP handbook and program pages, and Georgia and South Carolina rules. Your course faculty and the College of Nursing have the final word.
Whatever your program arranges, we find the preceptor who fits.
Tell us your Augusta University track, where in Georgia or South Carolina you live and when your next clinical course starts. We find preceptors near you who fit the course and Augusta University's rules, and hand you everything your faculty and the site need, well before the semester.
- Adult, pediatric and older-adult preceptors for
NURS 8312toNURS 8318, acute care forNURS 8332toNURS 8338 - Pediatric primary care for the PNP courses and psychiatric preceptors for
NURS 8342toNURS 8348 - Across Georgia and South Carolina, from the CSRA to Savannah, Atlanta and Columbia
Start your placement plan
Program, city and start date is all we need to begin.