How can I make up clinical hours?

[girlwith1eye]

For a combination of reasons, I've missed a bunch of days of clinical at school. Today the program director informed me that they do not offer anything to help students make up hours, and so I need to find something and pay for it on my own. She didn't give me any other information, so now I'm left wondering what to do? Do I just walk into a facility and ask??

[CT Pixie, BSN, RN]

What are the minimum required clinical hours in your state for a student to be licensed? My program has about 200 extra hours built into the program over our state minumum. Are you still meeting the minimum requirements for the state? If so, definitely ask about alternative assignments (case studies, lab time, volunteering at a free clinic, etc).

Best of luck.

My program also had an insane amount of clinical hours above what the State required as the minimum built into clinicals. However, they only allowed 2 absences from clinical. No more than two. My class figured it out and have 3 clinicals missed still exceeded the State minimum by a huge amount. A friend tried to appeal their making her repeat a semester due to a 3rd absence with the argument that she still met AND exceeded the State minimum. Her appeal was denied because the School's handbook with expectations rules/regulations specifically stated that students were allowed two and only two.

[student987]

We must have 520 hours of class time and 560 of clinical time I am not sure the exact number we have but I know that it is JUST above the required

[mamabadger]

Wow, guess I should feel lucky that my school has 8 extra clinical days built into the program. We can miss 8 clinical days over the course of the 18 month program, but we have to "make them up" at the end. If you don't miss all 8 then you just don't go to the last few days.

Anyway, some things we do that count toward our clinical hours that you might want to look in to: Are there any medical conferences you can attend? Does your school have contracts with any hospitals or clinics that will let you observe say in the wound center, GI, cardiac lab or ER? Birthing center? Adult daycare facility? We are also visiting our state board of nursing one day...basically to watch nurses going before the board to defend their licenses, mainly for diverting patient drugs. When our particular clinical site has a low census we will spend a majority of the day doing research on diseases, medications and writing care plans. I am not by any means discounting the extreme importance of bedside experience, but there is more to nursing and I have learned a great deal from my observation days. We deal with feeding tubes on a regular basis and during my observation in the GI lab I watched one being placed...it was a great learning experience that my instructor did not have to be present for, but again, my school has a contract for these observations with the hospital. But enough rambling...I hope this helps or more importantly that you have already found a solution to the problem.

Good luck to you.