San Antonio, Laredo and South Texas: a UT Tyler clinical guide
South Texas pairs a large medical city with county after county of clinician shortage: San Antonio holds the region's two Level I trauma centers, while 23 of the 25 counties are county-wide geographic HPSAs for mental health. One San Antonio system lists UT Tyler among its partners, and another tells NP students to find their own preceptor. This guide lays out both, county by county and course by course.
Find a preceptor in South Texas
Tell us your city, UT Tyler track and next clinical course, and your placement advisor searches from the Hill Country to the border.
Twenty-five counties from the Hill Country to the Rio Grande
The region starts from DSHS Public Health Region 8, gives its Golden Crescent counties to the Coastal Bend guide, and adds McMullen plus Webb, Zapata and Jim Hogg from the South Texas border. That leaves the San Antonio metro counties (Atascosa, Bandera, Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe, Kendall, Medina and Wilson), Kerr and Gillespie in the Hill Country, Karnes, and 14 border counties running from Laredo and Zapata to Eagle Pass, Del Rio and Uvalde.
The Census Bureau counted 3,392,063 residents in 2025. San Antonio has about 1.55 million, Laredo about 270,000 and New Braunfels about 122,000. For FNP OSCE days in Tyler, routing estimates give roughly 280 miles from New Braunfels, 310 from San Antonio, 320 from Kerrville and about 460 from Laredo or Del Rio.
San Antonio's systems and what their pages ask
Before any hospital's own steps, UT Tyler's apply: your preceptor's details go into a Self-Placement Request, faculty approve the site, the Clinical Coordinator clears it and any needed agreement is signed before your first hour. The systems below add their own layer.
- University Health (University Hospital, Women's & Children's): the clearest public process in the region. An agreement must be in place before any student rotation, and its published list of current education partners includes The University of Texas at Tyler. The school coordinator runs clearance, sends requests at least 30 to 45 days before the start and attests to orientation, insurance and immunizations. The page does not say who finds an NP student's preceptor.
- Baptist Health System (Tenet, six San Antonio hospitals plus Resolute in New Braunfels): according to an archived copy of its student page, an affiliation agreement must be on file before a request, and finding a physician or NP preceptor is the NP student's own job. Paperwork includes its orientation booklet forms, plus a Preceptor Agreement when the preceptor is Baptist's own.
- CHRISTUS Santa Rosa (CHRISTUS Children's, Westover Hills, New Braunfels): a Clinical Education Affiliation Agreement must be signed before the term, a student's faculty advisor identifies the site, and faculty send a Notification of Student Experience, with orientation forms due a week before arrival.
- Methodist Healthcare's nine hospitals, among them Methodist Children's and Methodist Hospital Hill Country in Fredericksburg (the former Hill Country Memorial), showed no NP request process in the archived pages research could read.
- UT Health San Antonio's hospital publishes no route for outside students, and its School of Nursing arranges precepted experiences for its own graduate students. Brooke Army Medical Center is silent on outside students, and the South Texas VA's 200-plus yearly nursing placements are mostly undergraduates from local schools.
Border counties and the shortage picture
Beyond Bexar and its nearest suburban counties, clinicians are scarce. For primary care, 17 of the 25 counties are county-wide geographic HPSAs, with Jim Hogg scoring 23 of 25; only Comal, Guadalupe and Kendall have no designation. For mental health, 23 counties are county-wide geographic HPSAs, Bexar is a low-income population HPSA, Kendall alone is clear, and Zavala and Dimmit both score 20.
DSHS reports 27% of Texas border residents uninsured against 17% elsewhere, and the state's nursing workforce center found 87 APRNs per 100,000 people in border counties against 118 in the rest of Texas. In Laredo, neither Laredo Medical Center nor Doctors Hospital of Laredo publishes a student process, so a search there usually runs through clinics and practices. Five critical access hospitals serve Carrizo Springs, Pearsall, Hondo, Kenedy and Uvalde.
HRSA lists 120 health center sites from ten organizations. CommuniCare (31 sites) and CentroMed (28) cover San Antonio; South Texas Rural Health Services runs 15 sites from Cotulla and Pearsall to Carrizo Springs; United Medical Centers serves Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Brackettville; and Gateway Community Health Center covers Laredo, Zapata and Hebbronville.
Course by course in South Texas
For NURS 5453 pediatrics, San Antonio has three children's settings: University Health's Women's & Children's Hospital, Methodist Children's and CHRISTUS Children's, plus pediatric practices. For NURS 5454, NURS 5455 and the FNP internships NURS 5347 and NURS 5349, the health center networks and family practices from New Braunfels to Laredo fit well.
The psychiatric sequence, NURS 5367 to NURS 5373, is the hard search: CMS lists four psychiatric hospitals across 25 counties, and almost every county is a mental health shortage area. The PMHNP practicum rules call for at least 125 inpatient hours in the program and no preceptor for more than two rotations.
For acute care practica (NURS 7383 through NURS 7388), University Hospital holds one of the region's two Level I trauma designations; the other belongs to Brooke Army Medical Center, which publishes nothing on civilian students. Baptist, Methodist and CHRISTUS hospitals add acute care beds across the metro.
Why South Texas students choose us
Baptist puts the preceptor search on the NP student, University Health runs through school coordinators on a 30-to-45-day clock, and the border counties rely on a thin clinician pool, so the work that decides a South Texas placement is the search itself. Your placement advisor finds a preceptor near your home, matches the setting to your exact UT Tyler course and hands you a complete Self-Placement Request packet while there is still room for agreements and onboarding. Tell us where you live.
Questions UT Tyler students ask
Is UT Tyler on University Health's partner list?
Yes. University Health names The University of Texas at Tyler on its published list of current education partners. It signs new agreements only with not-for-profit schools physically based in Texas, which take about six to eight weeks, and requires an agreement before approving any student. Its page does not say whether NP students bring a preceptor, so check with your course faculty.
Do I have to find my own preceptor at Baptist Health System?
Yes, according to an archived copy of its student page: NP and PA students are responsible for finding a physician or nurse practitioner to precept them, and the page points them to its physician directory. An affiliation agreement with your school must be on file before the request, and students get no electronic health record access.
Are there nurse practitioner residencies in San Antonio?
The South Texas VA runs a 12-month NP residency with Primary Care, Mental Health and Geriatric and Extended Care tracks, taking applications from January to March for a September start. It is a post-graduate program for new NPs, not a place to earn UT Tyler clinical hours, but worth knowing as graduation nears.
How far is Laredo from UT Tyler's campus?
Roughly 460 miles, about eight and a half hours by road, similar to Del Rio and Eagle Pass. San Antonio is closer at about 310 miles. FNP students make the trip for OSCE days, and the OSCE planning guide shows how to fit it around clinical weeks.
Can I do clinical hours across the river in Nuevo Laredo or Piedras Negras?
No. Living in Texas and logging every clinical hour inside the state are both UT Tyler requirements for NP students, and PMHNP syllabi extend the rule to the preceptor and the patients. However close Nuevo Laredo or Piedras Negras sits, a clinic there does not count. See the Texas-only rule.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-25
We check these pages against UT Tyler's own catalog, syllabi, program pages and clinical policies, and Texas rules. Your course, your program coordinator and the Clinical Coordinator have the final word.
UT Tyler asks you to choose your clinical site. We find it.
Tell us your UT Tyler track, where in Texas you live and when your next clinical course starts. We find preceptors near you who fit the course and gather everything your Self-Placement Request needs, so faculty can approve it before the semester.
- Preceptors matched to the course: pediatrics for
NURS 5453, adult and geriatric care forNURS 5455, psychiatric care forNURS 5367 - Texas-licensed preceptors who clear UT Tyler's supervisor, relative and site rules
- Anywhere in Texas, from the Piney Woods to the Valley
Start your placement plan
Program, city and start date is all we need to begin.