A working library of the security, privacy, compliance, and fairness features that set Preceptor.Network apart from generic placement services. This page is a living catalog — we'll add to it as the network grows.
Every account on Preceptor.Network is tied to a real, verifiable person. We do not let strangers sign up, type in a fake school name, or claim a license that isn't theirs.
Students must sign up with the email address their school issues them. The system auto-detects the institution from the domain and links the student to the correct school record. No personal Gmail, Yahoo, or throwaway addresses.
A 6-digit one-time passcode is sent to the signup email and must be entered to continue. Codes expire in 15 minutes, are rate-limited, and verified addresses persist in a durable ledger so the same email cannot be quietly swapped later.
Preceptor.Network is built for advanced nursing students — every student account must resolve to a real, licensed nurse record on file. Signup never accepts a typed-in name with no underlying license.
Preceptor accounts are claimed by matching the person's name and license state against Nursys nurse-person records and NPPES NPI data. License type, NPI, and board status are confirmed before the profile becomes searchable.
Any preceptor charging a precepting fee must complete a live person-check that confirms a real human is behind the profile. Trained staff review each submission against a structured checklist before the preceptor is cleared to collect a fee.
Paid preceptors are re-verified on an 11-month / 6-month staggered cycle. We do not just check identity once and leave it forever — the network keeps the verification fresh for as long as money is on the line.
School-affiliated administrators are elevated by Preceptor.Network staff and linked only to their own institution's programs, students, and placement data. Schools cannot see, query, or interfere with other schools' rosters.
Nurse identity records are ingested from Nursys, NPPES, state boards (DCA), and direct API mode — and every record carries provenance metadata so we always know where the data came from and how recently it was refreshed.
Students never expose their personal email, phone number, or address to a stranger. Preceptors never get spammed by people they didn't agree to talk to. The platform is the buffer.
Students never see an inbox on Preceptor.Network. Each conversation gets a private pn_alias address. Preceptors send a real email; the system relays it to the student's school email without ever revealing their direct address.
Inbound email is accepted only for known platform addresses. Anything else is rejected at the boundary. There are no resting mailboxes for an attacker to break into and no shared inboxes to compromise.
Mail that doesn't match an active match or known sender is automatically quarantined for staff review. Preceptors can flip on strict mode to require approval for any sender outside their active conversations.
Every paid match generates two distinct 4-digit codes — one shown to the student, one to the preceptor. Both parties must read back the other's code on a live call before the precepting fee is released. Stops impersonators cold.
When admins reply to user feedback, the Reply-To uses an HMAC-signed alias on a dedicated mail pipe. Replies route back to the right ticket without exposing internal email addresses or staff identities.
All business logic, data access, and identity decisions happen server-side. The browser only renders pages — there is no public API key floating in JavaScript that a competitor or attacker can reverse-engineer.
A good match is more than "specialty." It has to satisfy the school's program rules, the state board's preceptor restrictions, the student's actual progress, and both calendars. Preceptor.Network knows the difference.
Matching uses the real nursing-education hierarchy: Program → Role → Population Focus → Care Model → Specialty → Clinical Placement. A student in an FNP program looking for primary-care women's health gets the right preceptors — not a fuzzy keyword match.
Preceptors keep raw weekly availability and blocked dates. Students live in academic terms with start and end dates. The matcher computes the overlap so a confirmed match always has actual hours both parties can keep.
Rotation eligibility doesn't trigger on a generic term-start date. It triggers when a student has completed Pathophysiology, Pharmacology, and Physical Assessment. Students advance at different paces, and the matcher respects that.
The matching layer knows that Pennsylvania disallows a PA from precepting an NP student, that Texas restricts FNP-precepting-AGACNP, and other state-board nuances that generic placement services miss. Mismatches are blocked before they happen.
Schools configure their own program-level rules: required credentials, allowed site types, encounter-mix requirements, and quarterly preceptor re-verification cadence. Their rules are enforced inside the matcher, not in a PDF nobody reads.
When a confirmed match falls through, the student's request is auto-routed to preceptors who opted into the emergency pool. Staff review each emergency request and search the pool for a backup before the student loses a term.
When a match has any soft conflict — out-of-state preceptor, dual-role overlap, school-policy exception — the conflict is surfaced and disclosed before payment, not buried in fine print.
Reviews, badges, and letters are only useful if they are real. Preceptor.Network treats reputation as something earned, audited, and revocable — not as marketing fluff.
Verified Preceptor, Student-Friendly, Free Preceptor, Emergency Supporter, Top Mentor, Accepting [Term] — each badge has a public verify URL with a signed token. Display them on a profile, LinkedIn, clinic bio, or email signature.
Students rate teaching, patience, and feedback on a 1-5 scale. Preceptors can dispute. Staff adjudicate using a structured "student_right" / "preceptor_right" ruling, and overturned reviews recalculate the blended rating.
Preceptors can flag a review they believe is inappropriate or retaliatory. Staff review the flag and can mark a review as not-impacting, hide it, or dismiss the flag. The action is logged either way.
Students can generate a polished Letter of Appreciation for a preceptor. Preceptors can write a Letter of Recommendation for a student. Both are signed PDFs with metadata, kept on file, and sent through the platform.
When reported rotation hours diverge by more than 30% from scraped values, the discrepancy is flagged. Staff accept the scrape, keep the stored value, or defer — and every decision is logged with the reviewer and timestamp.
Students and preceptors can publish their own stories about completing clinicals, paying it forward, or returning as a preceptor after graduation. The alumni pipeline pre-fills school, specialty, and license data so coming back is one form, not five.
Clinical paperwork is sensitive. Preceptor.Network does not stockpile your credentials in a single basket — and the few bytes we do hold are protected at every layer.
Credentials, immunizations, and clinical paperwork live in a HIPAA-aligned MeCentral vault, not in our database. Preceptor.Network forwards the bytes during upload but does not retain them. Sharing is per-document and gated to a specific paid match.
Sensitive configuration is held outside the public application surface and outside any source-controlled directory. Structurally impossible to expose through a code commit or a stray request.
Paid Preceptor Profile Review videos are encrypted with strong, industry-standard authenticated encryption and moved to long-term protected storage shortly after capture, with the local copy purged.
Database and full-project backups run on a regular cadence and are shipped to off-host protected storage so a single-server failure or compromise cannot erase the network's history.
Preceptor.Network uses dedicated, scoped database credentials with the minimum privileges needed to operate. There are no shared cross-project credentials and no over-privileged service accounts.
The application server runs a default-deny firewall — nothing is reachable from the internet unless it has been explicitly reviewed and approved. New services do not appear by drift.
A real platform needs real eyes on it. Preceptor.Network ships with the operational tooling to actually run the network responsibly — not a shell company with one inbox.
A single dashboard surfaces who is online, new signups in the last 24 hours by role, programs needing verification, pending credits, active promo codes, open feedback, badge awards, review disputes, and writer applications.
Real-time session tracking shows visitor ID, IP, country/region/city, device/OS/browser, user-agent, referrer, and page hits. Filterable by humans, bots, or all — bots are kept out of the analytics view by default.
Pageviews, geographic distribution, device types, traffic sources, and UTM campaign data are all tracked in our own database. We don't need to ship visitor data to a third-party tracker to know how the site is performing.
Quarantined inbound mail is reviewed in a dedicated console: drop, route to the correct match, or delete. Strict-mode toggles only apply to future inbound — pre-existing quarantines are never bulk-released.
Staff attach notes to users, preceptor profiles, and other records for internal reference. Status changes, review adjudications, and verification decisions all log the reviewer, timestamp, and rationale.
Users submit suggestions and problems through a floating modal. Staff move tickets through new → reviewed → in-progress → resolved or won't-fix, attach internal notes, and reply via Brevo with every reply recorded.
Anyone can apply to write for the blog, but applications are reviewed by staff before access is granted. Comments are moderated. Drafts and published posts each have their own review states.
School programs surfaced for matching are reviewed in a curation queue before they go live. We do not auto-publish whatever a scraper found — humans confirm program accuracy.
Students are already sacrificing enough. Preceptor.Network is built around a $10 match fee, free preceptor accounts, and a transparent ledger — not a five-figure invoice and a sales call.
A confirmed match is $10. Students request the credit, an admin approves it, and the credit is consumed when the match is paid. The ledger is unified — every transaction visible end-to-end with no hidden line items.
Anyone qualified can sign up as a preceptor for free. Reviewing inbound requests is free. Messaging is free. Video verification is only required if a preceptor chooses to charge a precepting fee.
When a school underwrites placements for its own students or partners with its own preceptor pool, the match runs through an internal $0 payment path. The transaction is still recorded — just waived.
Schools and partners can negotiate underwritten matches and student discounts that fit how their program actually runs. Real, custom arrangements — not locked-in pricing tiers.
Preceptor.Network is a coordination layer, not an employer. We do not require students or preceptors to sign exclusivity agreements, and we do not insert ourselves into the clinical relationship.
Verification codes, match notifications, and reset emails are sent through redundant delivery paths so a single provider hiccup doesn't silence the messages students and preceptors are waiting on.
We're publishing an ongoing series of head-to-head posts comparing Preceptor.Network to other placement services on identity verification, privacy, compliance, and pricing. Check the blog for the latest.