NUR 683 Primary Care of the Adult 2: the second adult rotation
Ball State's NUR 683 Primary Care of the Adult 2 carries 4 credits and 120 supervised clinical hours, and it stays locked until you earn a B in NUR 681. You need an adult primary care preceptor for it, and under Ball State's FNP rules you arrange that preceptor yourself, well before the term begins.
Need an adult primary care preceptor for NUR 683?
Tell us the term on your plan of study and where you live. Your placement advisor starts the search around Ball State's rules.
NUR 683
NUR 683 at a glance
Ball State's figures for Adult 2 are spread across the catalog, the FNP page and the certificate page. Here they are in one place.
| Item | Ball State's figure or rule | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Credits | 4 | 2026-27 graduate catalog |
| Clinical hours | 120 | FNP page and post-master's certificate page |
| Average clinical time | About 1 day per week | Post-master's certificate page |
| Entry requirement | A B in NUR 681; NUR 682 and NUR 684 before it or alongside it | 2026-27 catalog prerequisites |
| Setting | Primary care or clinic, not acute care, not your own unit or clinic | MS in Nursing FAQ |
| Share of the FNP total | 120 of the 690 FNP hours | FNP page |
Course objectives, clinical expectations and evaluation forms are not public: they sit in the syllabus and in the NP clinical packet on Canvas. See what the clinical packets hold.
How NUR 683 builds on NUR 681
The catalog sets the order: Adult 2 opens only after a B in Adult 1, and B is Ball State's lowest passing grade for any NUR course. Adult 1 also holds the FNP's one required campus day, eight clinical hours in Muncie, so that trip is done before Adult 2 begins. The NUR 681 guide covers the first adult term.
The Graduate Nursing Handbook 2025-26 adds a hard stop. An unresolved Incomplete in NUR 681 bars you from the next NP clinical course until you clear it with a passing grade, and an Incomplete in NUR 683 works the same way. A few lost weeks in Adult 1 can therefore move Adult 2, and the preceptor you booked for it, into a later term.
NUR 682 Primary Care of Children and NUR 684 Primary Care of Women may come before Adult 2 or run beside it. Read together, the prerequisites allow four clinical terms at the fastest: NUR 634 alone; Adult 1 paired with children or women; Adult 2 paired with whichever of those is left; and the practicum last. That is our reading of the catalog; the plan of study Ball State emails after admission sets your real order.
The preceptor and practice that suit Adult 2
Every Ball State FNP clinical is a primary care placement: the MS FAQ steers students toward clinics and away from acute care, and the FNP page allows 682 of its 690 hours in a family practice setting. For a course named Primary Care of the Adult 2, the natural match is a practice that follows adults and older adults over time: a family practice, an adult primary care office or an internal medicine clinic. Your course faculty confirm the fit against the syllabus.
Preceptor eligibility is defined in the qualification section of the NP clinical packet, open only to admitted students, so treat that packet and your course faculty as the authority. In some states Ball State adds a second evaluator, the clinical supervisor, beside the preceptor. Our preceptor requirements page lays out what Ball State has made public.
Checks before you accept an Adult 2 site
- It is outside your own unit or clinic.
- It is in a state on Ball State's MS in Nursing authorization map, and it is the state you live in.
- It is not part of a health system named in Ball State's clinical agency notes, such as Spectrum Health or Henry Ford in Michigan.
- The agency is willing to use Ball State's standard affiliation agreement, or you have built in extra time for its own contract.
- The preceptor sees enough adults, week after week, to fill 120 hours inside your term.
When to start the NUR 683 search
Two Ball State timelines apply: the graduate handbook's year of lead time for lining up a clinical placement, and the School of Nursing's advice to open agency arrangements roughly one semester out while keeping a backup agency for each term. Because Adult 2 can follow Adult 1 by a single term, the search for it usually overlaps your first clinical courses.
- Pin down the termFind
NUR 683on your plan of study. Ball State notes that not every course runs every semester, so confirm the term with your advisor before you promise a preceptor dates. - Secure the preceptor earlyAim for a firm yes about a year out, since busy adult practices often host students from several schools.
- Open the agreement earlySend the agency Ball State's standard affiliation agreement about a semester before the term; only original signatures are accepted. Our affiliation agreement guide walks through it.
- Keep a backup warmHold a second adult primary care site for the same term, as Ball State suggests for every semester.
- Clear compliance before day oneKeep American Data Bank current and your CORE account linked. ADB's review can take up to three to five business days, and the School will not speed it up.
Fitting 120 hours into a 2026-27 term
Ball State's MS landing page budgets 8 to 12 hours weekly for each clinical course. 2026-27 is the year Ball State moved to 15-week semesters: fall runs August 24 to December 11, 2026, spring January 11 to April 30, 2027, and the 10-week summer term May 17 to July 23, 2027. Ball State does not publish whether a given graduate NUR course runs the whole term or seven weeks.
Our arithmetic, not a Ball State figure: 120 hours across 15 weeks comes to 8 hours a week, and across 10 summer weeks it comes to 12. A preceptor who can give you one full clinic day every week suits a fall or spring term; a summer term needs more.
Hours count only while you are compliant. Under the handbook, a noncompliant student cannot accumulate clinical hours, repeats any logged in that state, loses Clinical Expectation Points each noncompliant week and receives an automatic clinical failure after more than four such weeks in a term. Our American Data Bank and CORE guide covers the deadlines.
Certificate and DNP students
Post-master's FNP certificate students whose first master's was in a non-NP field take NUR 683 with the same 120 hours. Students who already hold an Adult or Adult-Gerontology NP master's follow a shorter track of NUR 682, NUR 684 and NUR 673, 390 hours in all, with no Adult 2. The certificate guide explains both tracks and the certificate's state limits.
The DNP's FNP cognate has its own adult courses, NUR 781 Primary Care 1 and NUR 783 Primary Care 3, with hours Ball State publishes only as totals. The DNP clinical hours guide sets those figures out.
How we find your Adult 2 preceptor
We start from your plan of study and the term NUR 683 falls in, then search for adult primary care preceptors within a workable drive of home in your authorized state. Every candidate is checked against Ball State's rules before you hear the name: outside your own unit or clinic, outside the systems Ball State declines, and open to the standard affiliation agreement. A backup is lined up at the same time.
You get a preceptor profile ready for your clinical packet, the right person at the agency for the affiliation agreement and an ADB and CORE checklist, in time for Ball State's placement and compliance staff to do their review. Course faculty give the approval. If a preceptor pulls out mid-term, your placement advisor switches you to the backup site. Send us your term through the request form.
Questions Ball State students ask
Can my NUR 681 preceptor also precept me for NUR 683?
Ball State's public pages neither allow nor rule out keeping the same preceptor for both adult courses; the preceptor rules live in the NP clinical packet, so put the question to your course faculty. When a practice sees plenty of adults and your faculty agree, staying on can shorten onboarding. Keep a second option anyway, since Ball State advises a backup agency every semester.
Is NUR 683 a geriatrics or specialty rotation?
Ball State titles the course Primary Care of the Adult 2 and asks for primary care or clinic settings, not acute care. It does not publish a specialty list for the course. A family or adult primary care practice with a good share of older patients usually suits it, while specialty clinics and inpatient services are a question for your course faculty before you commit.
What happens if I earn a C in NUR 681?
A grade below B does not pass a Ball State NUR course, so Adult 2 stays locked until you retake Adult 1 and earn a B. Ball State allows one repeat of a course, and a student who fails a second course of any kind is dismissed. Your advisor reworks the plan of study, and any preceptor booked for Adult 2 will need new dates.
Does NUR 683 require another trip to Muncie?
Ball State ties the FNP's one required 8-hour campus clinical day to NUR 681, not to Adult 2. The graduate catalog does warn that some NP clinical courses may call for a campus visit, so watch your course announcements in Canvas. Ball State has not published when the campus day happens or what it covers.
Can I complete NUR 683 hours in another state?
Only in a state where Ball State's School of Nursing is authorized to offer the MS in Nursing, and the handbook requires you to live there too. If you move during the program, the handbook gives you a week to tell the Clinical Placement Coordinator and requires your updated license to be approved in ADB. Moving to a state that is not authorized stops your progress in the program.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-26
We check these pages against Ball State's own catalog, graduate handbook, program pages and State Authorization Map, and Indiana rules. Your course faculty, your advisor and the Graduate Clinical Placement Coordinator have the final word.
Ball State asks you to find your preceptor. We find one near you.
Tell us your Ball State track, where you live and when your next clinical course starts. We find preceptors near you who fit the course, confirm the practice will sign Ball State's affiliation agreement, and line up a backup, so the School of Nursing can clear the site before the semester.
- Preceptors matched to the course: pediatrics for
NUR 682, women's health forNUR 684, adult primary care forNUR 681andNUR 683 - Outside your own unit or clinic, in a state where Ball State's program is authorized
- Across Indiana, from Muncie to Evansville, and in the other states Ball State accepts
Start your placement plan
Program, city and start date is all we need to begin.