Clinical Rotations

Please see my response in the Welcome forum where you posted first.

In my ADN program we have 10 clinical hours per week (five hours per day for two days) during our first year. We also have 14 classroom hours per week and we will spend another 4-5 hours at the clinical setting the night before to "prepare" for our patient(s) (i.e. looking at the chart, studying pathophysiology, etc.). Those of us with jobs work no more than 15-20 hours per week since we need time to study and sleep outside of school. :)

The actual time at the hospital day of clinical was about 4 hours. Your instructor should be able to tell you that requirement specifically. The unpredictable time was the prep the night before. I would often spend 7 hours- at least 2 hours with chart review and then you need to look up every medication, diagnosis, procedure, ect. and write your care plan. As the semester progresses you will find there is repetition of these things that you research- save all your notes and keep a hand held index card organizer of medications so you will have some meds pre-researched.

I found working double shifts on the weekends to keep my week days free to work best during nursing school. My advisor actually told me it would be impossible to work full time during school. Without the ability to be very organized and go without lots of sleep, she would have been right. I don't know how working moms ever make it through nursing school. Hats off to them.

First semester - two 8 hour days in clinical and two days in the classroom (Friday was

a 13 hour day between three classes)

Second semester - two 8 hour days in clinical/ two days classroom

Third semester - two 10 hours days in clinical/ two days classroom

Fourth semester - two 10 hour days in clinical/ two days classroom

And so on.... the only difference was my final semester which had zero classes and full-time preceptorship - 600 hours worth - worked full-time for four months (and no, you won't get paid for it).