How do clinical placements work?

[erint91DC]

As in, how do schools generally place you into your clinicals? Do you get any say in the matter? Do you need to have an interview or anything like that?

[loriangel14, RN]

Schools will have agreements with certain facilities to take groups of students.You don't usually get to pick where you go except for your final placement.You go in groups.No you don't have to interview for it, it's part of your education.

[krisiepoo]

we got an email stating "you have been assigned to this hospital (don't even give us a floor/unit) and so and so will be your clinical instructor"

my guess is they assigned by last name abc, 123 because some people were in the same groups more than once

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

Depending on the size of the class, there are 10 students per clinical instructor. You sign up for a specific clinical day and those 9 other students are you clinical group. Each semester you will have a different mix of classmates in your clinical group. You usually start off in nursing home, then the following semesters med/surg at a hospital, maternity, peds, icu, mental health.

[erint91DC]

Thanks! That's basically what I expected.

[NICUmiiki, DNP, NP]

We have no say. We get our schedules about a week before class starts with our instructor and our unit (almost all of our clinicals are at the school's parent hospital). Sometimes the school will have clinicals in the next metro over that is about an hour away. The school doesn't force any students over there. We have several students who live in that area and will opt for that so they don't have to drive as much.

We get a little bit of say for our preceptorship the last semester.

[Stephalump]

Our first year it was self-selected, first come, first served. Second year, they took requests for day or location and I believe most we honored. We have a small program, though. The bigger, the less likely they are to be able to accommodate.

[springchick1, ADN, RN]

I'm told where to be and when to be there.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

Med-Surg I and II and Maternity (1st 2 semester of clinical), we received an email with our groups, clinical times and instructor's information. We didn't know where the placements would be before the semester and we had no choice in the matter.

For Peds, Psych and Community Health, we got to at least rank our choices. I got my top choice for all 3. Same with preceptorship- we had to write a proposal indicating why we wanted the specialty that we wanted and rank our choices of specialty and sub-specialty. I got exactly what I wanted there too... and then the clinical professor assigned to oversee it told me at the end of the semester that I shouldn't have been allowed to do my preceptorship on the floor that I did because it was the same floor I did pedi clinical on. Oh well, the semester was over by that point and I went on to work on that floor for 4 1/2 years.

[applesxoranges, BSN, RN]

My school we had full control except for the preceptorship. Well, full control as in we saw a list of clinicals/days/times/locations and we picked the one that we wanted. Only 7 per clinical and first come first serve. Oh and it had to match your location and section. Meaning my campus and if I am in peds lecture a, I need to get a peds clinical a and peds clinical b because b clinicals are for peds lecture b. There were a few small exceptions like we had a girl from tiny campus in the LPN to RN come to our psych clinical to save space and they have no psych floors near them.