Fort MacMurray Nurses I need help!!

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I am a third year BN student and I go to school in Newfoundland. I live in Fort Saskatchewan, AB and I applied to do my preceptorship with capital health in edmonton......well my school put in a request for me in october and the affiliation with my school and capital health is still not done and I start preceptorship in april soo i applied for my preceptor in Fort Mac since it is not too far from home.....They accepted two of our students but now I am waiting to hear if they can find a preceptor for me....I was wondering if there were any nurses working in Fort Mac who would like to take on a student? I am very desperate since I REALLY want to be close to home. I am very homesick and I have not seen my family since christmas. If anyone can help me please let me know :) It would be greatly appreciated!!

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So I am guessing nobody can help me?

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FYI, some nurses only check into this forum once a week.

Fort Mac seems to be sending most of their patients down to CH lately. I'm actually beginning to wonder if the hospital up there does any surgeries or deliveries.

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This should be an edit, but it won't let me.

Capital Health has a hard time with enough nurses wanting to act as preceptors for local students. Currently on my unit there are four RN and two LPNs acting as preceptors. I believe the theory is preceptor locally before trying to find preceptors for out of towners.

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yea I realize that but thats not even the problem.....its the contract. Capital Health has assured my school that they can find me a preceptor its just the contract I'm waiting on. Also the third year students dont do preceptor like the third years at my school. I feel like people get a little hostile when I say I want to go to Alberta to do my preceptorship and why didnt i just stay in Alberta to do my degree? The school i am in is a very good school and offers the most clinical hours in canada so I felt like it was a good choice to go there so I can get a lot of practice. Also the tuition prices are way lower than u of a. Thanks for your comments. Hopefully I will get my placement.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

I second what Fiona59 says about Capital Health. Our unit currently has five senior practicum students and our usual half dozen new staff orientees. The pool of people deemed suitable to preceptor by our CNE and management and those willing to take on the responsibility of preceptoring new staff is small, and shrinking fast. They're trying to have only junior staff preceptoring (what sense there is in that escapes me) so the quality of the experience (and by extension the quality of care from these new staffers) is being watered down continually. The rationale is that our census and acuity are always so high that senior staff have to take the really complex patients and those aren't suitable for students or new staff. I often do a single "buddy" shift with a new staff nurse or student when their assigned preceptor isn't available. For awhile I was getting a reputation as the Orientee Killer... my assessment of the person's skills, knowledge base and potential for success in the unit was usually vastly different from their preceptor's and the person would end up being let go. That hasn't happened for a while, but the possibility is aways there.

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