How St. Louis and Kansas City health systems take NP students

The systems at a glance

Each entry carries one of three labels. Confirmed means the system's own page was read directly. Excerpt means the page blocked automated reading, so the detail comes from a search-result excerpt of it and may be dated. Third-party means the source is not the system itself.

A system's clearance is one of Maryville's four approvals, not a substitute for the other three. Maryville's own rules on who may precept at a Missouri site are on Missouri NP clinical rules.

Mercy: bring your own Mercy preceptor (confirmed)

Mercy takes students through an "Individual Learning Experience" application, and the order matters: you must secure a Mercy preceptor before you apply, and that preceptor can't be family. The school also needs an Academic Affiliation Agreement with the specific Mercy facility. Where there isn't one, the school, not the student, contacts Mercy's student experiences team.

Applications are accepted from 60 days to 3 weeks before the start date. The school attests to your requirements on Mercy's Letter of Good Standing template:

• immunizations;
• a background check;
• a urine drug screen of at least 7 panels, done after admission;
• malpractice coverage, with proof from you only if the school's policy doesn't cover you.

Maryville's public pages don't state its student liability coverage, so ask the Online Clinical Team how that line gets answered. On site, Mercy's student policies call for scrubs and the school name badge at all times. Don't confuse this Mercy with Mercyhealth, a separate organization in Wisconsin and Illinois.

SSM Health: a placement form for provider students (confirmed)

SSM Health's placement page runs two routes. "Provider students", the page's term for NP and other advanced practice students, find an SSM Health provider themselves and then submit the online Student Clinical Placement Form. Nursing student requests, precepted or instructor-led, go through MyClinical Exchange and are submitted by school coordinators. The page lists a St. Louis coordinator for graduate nursing and advanced practice providers, and says a request does not by itself secure a placement.

SSM's policy "Student Clinical Affiliations and Rotations", reviewed May 6, 2026, adds the school-side requirements:

• an academic affiliation agreement before any rotation;
• orientation covering HIPAA, codes, fire, OSHA, infection prevention and the EHR, among other topics;
• a background check within 90 days of program start, adding the Missouri Family Care Safety Registry for home health, Cardinal Glennon and behavioral health;
• a 13-panel drug screen, a TB test within the past year, immunizations, and an AHA CPR card for direct patient-care areas;
• the school's formal request 21 days before the rotation.

Students get Workday Learning and Immuware access. If SSM needs a newer background check or drug screen than the one on file, Maryville has you reorder it in Exxat; see background check and drug screen.

BJC HealthCare: Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's

BJC, the St. Louis system, combined with Saint Luke's Health System in Kansas City on January 1, 2024, according to BJC's announcement. Research found no public APRN student intake process or onboarding platform for BJC or Barnes-Jewish Hospital; the pages are bot-protected.

St. Louis Children's Hospital, part of BJC, is clearer (excerpt). APRN student precepting runs through its Department of Clinical Education, and placement depends on:

• how complete the application is;
• faculty approval;
• the student's skills;
• program type;
• fit with the unit;
• preceptor availability.

The page says the hospital hosts about 60 graduate nursing students a year. Because Maryville's PNP track centers on pediatric primary care, and Maryville said in 2023 that PNP settings belong in primary or preventive care, confirm the unit fits first; see PNP preceptors.

Kansas City: Saint Luke's, University Health and the MOKAN network

Saint Luke's Health System (excerpt) keeps its own name in Kansas City inside BJC. It has an Advanced Practice Provider/Graduate Nursing Student Clinical Placement form, and applications from Saint Luke's employees and Saint Luke's College students get first priority. From June 1, 2026, Saint Luke's collects onboarding documents on the Clinical Student platform.

University Health (excerpt), formerly Truman Medical Center, takes APRN requests on its Graduate (APRN) Nursing Placement Request form with a Letter of Good Standing. Its page says it is currently placing only its own employees, because so many are pursuing advanced degrees. The page date is unknown.

The MOKAN network (third-party): the ClinicalStudent vendor lists a MOKAN Region (Kansas City) network naming Saint Luke's, Children's Mercy, University Health, North Kansas City Hospital, Liberty Hospital, Mosaic Life Care and others. On the Kansas side, The University of Kansas Health System (excerpt) says schools must submit every request through the MOKAN platform, and its Olathe and Paola sites pair preceptors centrally, so students shouldn't approach preceptors there directly.

Children's Mercy Kansas City (confirmed): its placement page covers undergraduate nursing, and no APRN-specific process was found.

CoxHealth, and which platforms these systems use

CoxHealth in Springfield (confirmed) onboards NP students through its Office of Medical Education. It requires an active affiliation agreement, an annual application from you, and a separate request for each rotation at least 30 days ahead; requests made later are denied. Approval depends on CoxHealth's contractual commitments and on preceptor availability.

On platforms, the confirmed picture is small: MyClinical Exchange and Immuware at SSM, and ClinicalStudent at Saint Luke's and the Kansas City MOKAN systems. Mercy's application platform wasn't named on its public pages.

No source was found showing BJC, Mercy, SSM Health, Saint Luke's or University Health using ACEMAPP. If a classmate or an old guide points you to ACEMAPP for one of these systems, check with the system before opening an account.

Lining a system's clock up with Maryville's

Published system deadlines all run shorter than Maryville's. Mercy's window closes 3 weeks before the start, SSM wants the school's formal request 21 days ahead, and CoxHealth denies requests made under 30 days. Maryville gives you Exxat access 3–4 months before the first clinical semester, and nothing starts until all four approvals are in.

So work backward from your term. Agree the preceptor first, since Mercy and SSM Health both expect you to have one before you apply. Then run the system's application alongside Maryville's Exxat site and preceptor request, because neither replaces the other; Maryville's onboarding guidance says a site's onboarding does not supersede the university's approval process.

For a system on Maryville's onboarding list, the Onboarding Request Form starts that side. If it uses its own contract, that contract can replace Maryville's MOU; see site approval for how Maryville judges the site itself.

Why St. Louis and Kansas City students choose us

Mercy and SSM Health want the preceptor settled first, and settling it is what we do. A placement advisor finds a preceptor who meets Maryville's rules at a site whose student process you can finish in time, steers you away from systems currently closed to outside students, such as University Health with its employee-only note, and keeps each system's deadline beside Maryville's Exxat timeline so neither clock surprises you.

Maryville and the health system each give their own approval, and you go to both with the preceptor agreed and the paperwork in hand. If a preceptor pulls out, we're on call to find another in the region. For the state picture beyond these metros, see the Missouri page, or tell us where you are.