Does your community college offer pediatrics as a clinical?

Published

I was shocked to learn today that some cc nursing programs do not include any pediatric training or clinical. It seems like this should be an integral part of nursing education. You may not chose to work in peds, but to have no experience at all?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Hospitalist Medicine.

Mine included a semester of Peds, which included clinicals. I had no interest in going in to Peds, so before I took the course I was dreading it. I actually enjoyed it and really learned a lot. I thought Peds was a requirement for accredited schools?

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Isn't it a basic requirement? Good lord, nursing education really is going down the toilet ...

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ED.

We had 2 semesters of Peds (only 1 semester of clinical) plus an Maternal-newborn semester + clinical.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med-Surg.

Mine does but its part of our last semester which also includes maternity and psych so I don't believe we get much more then an introduction.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Nursing education must include Pediatrics in order to be accredited in the US. It can be accomplished in a variety of ways.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in NICU, RNC.

Yes, we had a semester of peds, with about 120 hours of clinical, including 2-days in either PICU or NICU. We also had OB/maternal-newborn, with approx 90 hours of clinical including L&D, mother-baby, and NICU.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.

BSN at a private university here - our peds exposure was a semester that was 1/2 peds, 1/2 OB. We had about 5 days of peds clinicals, but it was in the small-town general hospital and at least one of our days, there were no pediatric patients admitted. So we watched educational videos about pediatrics in the staff break room. The rest of the time, I saw exactly one peds patient (a preschool age child with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome), because we all had to take turns and there were so few patients available for the entire five weeks. :( It was very disappointing, and if I had known that in advance, it probably would have led me to choose a different program.

Oh, and my psych clinical was a VA nursing home. It was interesting, but the patient population was comprised entirely of elderly men with dementia or schizophrenia. Not a lot of variety. I was disappointed with that, too.

Then we did about eight gajillion semesters of adult med-surg. Yes, eight gajillion.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Hospice, Palliative Care.

Yes, we had a complete semester of pediatric clinicals at the community college I attended. It was a great learning experience where I learned tracheotomy care including suctioning, giving medication via an NG tube, as well as doing head to toe pediatric assessments.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in M/S, LTC, Corrections, PDN & drug rehab.

I don't know if you're asking about LVN or RN. We covered peds in lecture but never clinical. I remember like it was yesterday our CI told us we would never have peds patients & not to help our nurse with a peds patient. What I thought was even weirder was that we had a clinical rotation in L&D, where we sure as hell couldn't land a job.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion