Are you required to do nights when you do your practicum?

203bravo, MSN, APRN · Jul 19, 2017

These issues are set by school policy -- need to check with your program for the specific answers.

sarahamelia · Jul 19, 2017

I'm not in the nursing program yet. I only applied a couple weeks ago but I want get as much info as possible. I also posted this so read about others' experience.

caliotter3 · Jul 19, 2017

Not all students can attend clinical placements at the same places and times, so each school has its own policy on choosing who goes where, when. Some schools ask the student to provide three choices (and why) for consideration, other schools simply make the placements without consideration. This information is disseminated at the information session held at the beginning of each term. We have no idea how this is done at your school as we don't even know which school you are attending. A phone call to the nursing department would provide your answers.

Julius Seizure · Jul 19, 2017

When I went to nursing school, most of our clinicals were during the daytime. You didn't get to pick where, because you had to go where the school had a clinical agreement. We had clinicals in a nursing home, a small hospital, and a larger hospital. During our senior year, when we did ICU clinicals, half of the students did day shift and half did night shift clinicals.

For our community health clinical, everybody was in a different location, and you didn't really get much of a choice where you went. I guess they knew most people would ask for the same few places, so they just picked randomly for us instead. Mine was at a homeless shelter and halfway house.

meanmaryjean, DNP, RN · Jul 19, 2017

There is little to no 'choice' involved. Sometimes you get lucky - but plan on not having any say in the matter.

ItsThatJenGirl, CNA · Jul 19, 2017

For the school that I'm hoping to get into, you pick your top three clinical shifts and hope for the best. There are at least 5 different clinical sites each semester, and there are day and evening shifts. But nothing is guaranteed. Have you tried to look at the schedule for the previous semester? That's where I've gotten my info.

203bravo, MSN, APRN · Jul 20, 2017

I'm not in the nursing program yet. I only applied a couple weeks ago but I want get as much info as possible. I also posted this so read about others' experience.

Ahhh - ok... I did all my clinical shifts during the day.. no nights for me or any of my classmates.

Scottishtape · Jul 20, 2017

All of our clinicals were during the day. Once practicum came, we filled out our forms telling them what shift we wanted, what hospital, and what units.

Most of us got what we wanted, but we had a very small class. Even then, some people didn't get what they wanted.

It will all depend on the program you eventually get into. Every school is so different.

lunanarya, BSN, RN · Jul 20, 2017

I think it depends on the class size and clinical site availability in your area. My class was a little larger this year, so to ensure each student got the required number of clinical hours needed to graduate, we had morning (6AM to 3PM) and evening (1PM to 10PM) shifts at times. We didn't get to chose our schedule but if there was an issue on a particular day, we were able to switch with another student. My town is small, with a critical access hospital and a couple of nursing homes, so for some of our specialties we had to travel to larger areas.

DesertRosee · Jul 21, 2017

We have Day and evening clinicals. For my program the day clinicals were harder to get into than the nights because a lot of people had kids and wanted days. They asked our preference for time, but it isn't guaranteed.

As for location they won't let us have clinical at a place where we work so we have to disclose where we work at, and then they choose for us based on who knows what. For the types of places we have clinicals it's various hospitals for med-Surg with rotations out to the ICU, ED, and OR depending on your semester, and a LTC facility for the first semster. For community we went to hospice and had a choice of going to a high school, urgent care, health department, or home health. For psych we went to an inpatient and outpatient psych facility. For peds we go to a children's hospital and have the option to go to an elementary school or a summer camp for children with chronic diseases, and for OB we're at the hospital.

It really varies from school to school and in some cases even clinical site to clinical site. I know in my program at certain clincal sites you got to shadow a wound care nurse while at another site you got to shadow the respiratory therapist. So it really varies soooo much.

kkbb, BSN, RN · Jul 21, 2017

All of our clinicals were during the day, and could be any day Monday through Saturday. We had no choices as to where we were placed, we were just assigned based on previous clinical performance, grades, and simulation lab conduct. The only exception was for our Community Health class, where we could pick places. Our clinicals were mainly at hospitals, one long term health facility, and then we had options for school nurse, immunization clinics, cardiac clinics, and so on.