How much community clinical does your school offer??

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How long is your community rotations. I have had more community clinical time than hospital clinical time so far and I am so upset about that:( I am in my second semester of my junior year of a BSN program and we start clinicals our sophomore year second semester. So far total I have had 12 weeks of community clinical and only 6 weeks of hospital clinical. HELLO, what is wrong with that picture. Today was my last day of a 6 week community clinical and next week we will go 3 weeks of PEDS and 3 weeks for OB. We will then turn around and do another 6 weeks of community my senior year in the last semester. So I will have a total of 12 weeks in community by the time I graduate. My senior year 1 semester which will be coming up in August. I will have 4 weeks of ICU, 4 weeks of Med-surg and 4 weeks of psych and then my last semester in addition to the community I mentioned we will have about 8 weeks of capstone in our area of choice.

So does anyone else have a lot of community? It just don't make sense to me to have so much since you can't do a whole lot hands on. I feel like I am not going to have nearly enough knowledge by the time I get done because of not getting enough time in the hospital setting.

My school has a strong push for the community since they know that community nursing is really evolving and growing really fast. But, how much is too much? Should there be a line?

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Hi Peaceful!

I'm not sure I know what community rotation is, our school doesn't have that rotation. Or maybe it is just called something else? What types of skills do you perform?

I'm in my 2nd semester (ADN) and we do med/surg for the entire semester. We have a one full day or two half days of OR rotation during this semester. I like doing med surg because you get to see so many different things, but unfortunately we don't get to perform a variety of skills. What we are able to do is at the discretion of each individual instructor, and mine this semester only wants us to do IVPB, drsg changes, and anything that needs to be DC'd. At first I was excited to do that, especially the IVPB, but now it doesn't seem like we're actually getting to do a whole lot. Depends on if our patient has any of those things ordered. I still have not given a shot. I get worried a lot because I feel like I am going to graduate the program so unprepared. It's a scary feeling.

I know I probably haven't helped much, but you are not alone! Some nurses I was talking to today said that they felt unprepared when they first graduated, but they learned on the job. Their advice was to make sure to get a job at a hospital that offers a preceptor program.

Good luck with your clinicals!

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Wow, 12 weeks total, huh?! We had a 7 week community clinical our last semester. I did school nursing, and the other choices were nursing home stuff and some Agape clinic for families. Then, each semester, we were required to spend one day (6-12 hours), in a community setting related to that specific clinical rotation. I had to assist in a Medicaid-funded woman's clinic, attended a childbirthing class and an AA meeting, and tour a nursing home and a children's rehab center. I'm not a total community-type person, but I really had fun in my school nursing clinical. The kids were so much fun!:cool:

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Hey there peaceful. When you say 12 weeks vs 6 weeks, what are we talking about in hours? I had community clincals last semester for 15 weeks, and then also psych clinicals for 8 weeks, but the hours were the same because we had community for one 8 hour day, and psych for two 8 hour days. Just wondered? I have to say personally that I didn't like my community clinicals all that much. Well....I take that back. I enjoyed it because we got to do some fun and interesting things (like spending one day with a prison nurse in a super-max facility....really neat....and kinda scary), but I felt like it really wasn't all that pertinent. You know what I mean?

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Specializes in Mental health, organization and leadership.

We have 6 weeks of about 50 at communal care. Pretty OK I think, I would´nt want to spend more time than necessary there...

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we spend 360 hours in the community, split in two semesters, 180 hours each semester.

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We did a full semester (two days per week/14 weeks) the last semester of our senior year. Public Health home visits....

We also did the first 6 weeks of our geriatric rotation at low income senior housing (bp screens, home visits, and teaching classes), they called that part of the rotation "community" also but it did not have a public health focus.

As to the amount of hours you spend in a public health setting, some programs include the curriculum necessary for your PHN (public health nurse license) in the program. If you are spending a lot of time in a public health setting, yoiu may be eligible to apply for your PHN directly after getting your license without additional coursework. Might want to look into it, could come in handy some day.

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Specializes in NICU.

With a BSN you are automatically able to get a PHN license. Without a BSN you need special classess of some sort.

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