Instructor keeps canceling clinicals

[spoild2588]

Hi, just want to get some opinions. This is my instructors first year teaching. She is only part time teaching, has a full time nursing job and is going to school for her masters. She has cancelled clinical about 4-5 Fridays now and the last 2 Fridays were consecutive. I feel like this is going to nip us all in the butt and we are going to get kicked out of the program for her carelessness. If my group doesn't open our mouth and tell our school then I feel like the facility we are at is eventually going to call the school. Being a novice nursing student, I feel like I am missing out on education. I don't know if I should report her and if I do then my whole group will be in trouble! What would you do?

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Why is she cancelling so often? I would ask her but I would certainly let her know that this isn't satisfactory....

[cp1024]

I don't think it should matter why she's canceling. What would happen if you called in to work that much? The CI is a professional nurse and should follow through on her responsibility to teach as she agreed. If it were too much for her to keep up with, then she shouldn't have agreed to the position. She's committing fraud by being paid for a job that she's not preforming.

You're getting screwed out of your clinical time that you are paying for and you are required to have a certain number of hours spend in clinical to graduate. What happens if your school finds out, and they will one way or another, and decide to make your entire clinical group retake the semester?

YOU MUST say something or do something about it! If the CI were sick or had something else serious that was an excusable absence, she could have found someone to 'sub' for her or rescheduled the clinical. And if she's having a hard time meeting the requirements of her job, then she should go to the school and notify them herself so that a new CI can be hired to supervise and teach the class. But to just cancel that much is unprofessional!

You cant have been in school much more than 10wks this semester, so that's like 1/2 of your Friday clinicals canceled (do you have clinical more than once a week? I hope so!!). If your classmates don't seem to be bothered by this, then report her anonymously you don't want to get screwed over by whistle blowing (I know what that's like...got screwed and ended up failing my first semester of NS b/c I reported my CI because 1/2 my clinical group went out drinking during lunch at clinical and she completely ignored it...but that's another story). If other people in your group are concerned as well, then go as a group and report it. That at least will show some integrity and maybe you guys can be able to make up the hours before it's too late in the semester. Good Luck!

[elkpark]

Is the school aware of this? What mechanisms are in place for making up those clinical days? State BONs require that nursing students have completed some specified number of hours of supervised clinicals in order to be eligible for licensure, which is why most nursing programs have such strict attendance policies. I've taught in programs in which, if you missed more than one day of clinical, you failed out of the program. And my experience with instructor absences has been that a) you (as the instructor) don't miss clinical unless you're dying and b) the school arranges for someone else on faculty to fill in as instructor rather than cancel the clinical. If you miss too many hours of scheduled clinical experiences, it doesn't matter how well you're doing in your classes, you're not going to be eligible for licensure. I would speak with someone "higher up" at the school about this ASAP. It doesn't matter how good her reasons are for cancelling; the school needs to be providing you with the necessary clinical experiences, one way or another.

[zoe92]

Report her to the dean of your nursing school. It is dangerous that she is canceling clinicals and it may affect you as students due to required state clinical hours.

[Philly_LPN_Girl, LPN]

I would say something because not only are you missing out on your hands on part of the education, you are also paying your money and should get your moneys' worth, and your class are missing out on a lot and by state law, a nurse has to have a certain amount of clinical time if I were you and your classmates, I would tell the DON about it and get something resolved here.

[sschr025]

Hi Spoiled - How did you end up resolving this problem. I'm having the same issue, and am very concerned and not sure how to handle this. We've missed a significant number of clinicals at this point (7), and I don't want this to affect my ability to graduate. Any help would be greatly appreciated.