How far is your commute to clinicals?

OHN19 · Sep 7, 2017

I live in a city ~10,000. The closest drive for a clinical site was like 5 minutes. The furthest was around an hour and 15 minutes

The only thing that sucked about the further away clinical was getting patient information the night before. It's pretty annoying driving an hour for 10 minutes of information to drive another hour and then wake up in 7 hours to drive back again.

It's kinda the nature of the beast though. You learn to deal with it.

shasta13 · Sep 8, 2017

45 min commute in no traffic, but in reality more like 1 hour-1 hour 15 min. Yes, even at 0500. Metro area population over 2 million, worst drivers in the U.S. There are two sites within 20 minutes of me, but I didn't draw those. I think I got the farthest site from my house.

PudgeMC, ADN · Sep 8, 2017

I commute 45-60 minutes. I live in one of the more rural suburbs though, so most of my cohort have shorter drives.

Quota, BSN, RN · Sep 8, 2017

I got the closest clinical site to my house, 3 miles, I expect it'll be 10-15 minutes from my house to walking into the hospital. My first clinical starts next week so timing is an estimate but I don't expect it to be more than 15 minutes. There are about 4-5 other clinical sites all within about 30 minutes from my house as well. I live in the D.C. Metro area so highly populated and lots of traffic.

Username invalid, RN · Sep 8, 2017

10 miles & 15 minutes away, pop is between 300,000- 400,000.

I would be appalled if my commute was over 30 minutes, and would rethink the school. Yech.

Never want to live in a big city.

imhorsemackerel, LPN · Sep 9, 2017

I live in the suburbs. My commute to school was about half an hour southwest of my house (about 20 miles). Clinicals were all over the place for LPN school because you have all of the other vocational schools, colleges, and universities claiming locations for their clinicals. Years ago my commute to 2 clinical sites would've been 10 minutes from where I live (If only I decided to try this earlier). Now one site is 27 miles east. If it were a test day, I would spend the morning in clinicals, then I would have to drive back west to class. That's about 34 miles west.

My biggest issue is that our instructor was not allowed to let us go until we had an hour before the test. Normally we had about an hour for lunch, but now we are given an hour for lunch and the drive back to class. I needed gas, but I had to drive to class because if I stopped on the way, I would've been late for the test. I think my lunch was a drop of water. Fun times....

If I get accepted into the RN program, my commute will be roughly the same, but school would now be about a 15 minute drive.

Mkakids · Sep 11, 2017

I live in a suburb of chicago. I travel 45 mins from school. Some of my classmates travel 5. Justvdepends on the luck of the draw.

shibaowner, MSN, RN, NP · Sep 11, 2017

I went to nursing school in Baltimore. For the BSN, all clinicals were in local hospitals, but Baltimore has more hospitals than any other city I've ever seen! Some clinicals were in the hospital next to the school, but others were all over and in the suburbs, so it could be up to a 45 minute drive from where I lived. For the MSN NP, it is a lot harder to find preceptors, so students were placed as far as 1.5 hours from school. The school was very up front and said students in the MSN program must have cars and must live close to school. For the BSN, clinicals were in groups, so students could car pool.

mindofmidwifery, ADN · Sep 11, 2017

I go to school in a city with ~850,000 people. My clinical commute this semester is about 30 minutes, but, I live in a smaller city outside of the large city. There are about 9 hospitals that we can be dispersed amongst. This semester, my school only worked with one of the health systems I guess, so we were placed in only four of those hospitals. Wherever we're placed is final, no changes are permitted and we're expected to attend whether we live 10 minutes away or an hour.