Clinical Hours

Specialties NP

Published

Hello all, trying to wade through and find the best fit for a FNP program. How many clinical hours on average(if there is such a thing) do you work a week? I want a program heavy on the clinical hours. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Eric

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

You might contact the individual schools you are interested in. I did an adult health CNS but did it as a post-MSN certificate and what I did was use my PTO for my clinical hours. I would work three weeks of the month and then take a week of PTO and cram 50-60 hours into that. Some of my clinical time I did on seconds and nights too. That might be an option if you have to find your own clinical situations. I worked full-time during all of my school situations.

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I would suggest you investigate more closely beyond just the # of clinical hours -- as we all know from our undergraduate nursing experiences, there are clinical hours, and then there are clinical hours ... You will want to be sure that, beyond simply a concrete number of hours, that time will be an intensive, high-quality learning experience, not just putting in time. For whatever reasons, and for better or for worse, there seems to be a huge range of quality among nursing graduate programs. For the amount of blood, sweat & tears (not to mention time and $$$) you will put into any nursing graduate program, it is well worth putting significant time and effort into research up front to make sure you are committing to a program you will be satisfied with. Of course, you may already be doing that and, if so, kudos to you for being persnickety about your choice! :)

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Everything Elkpark said.

Adding to that, to find a "best fit" program see if you can contact some recent graduates. Ask them about their perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of the program. What was the quality of their clinical experiences? Where are they working now? It tells a lot. You will be happy you investigated these things before handing over your pocketbook.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

Along this same line, find out if the clinical experiences are set up for you or are you to find your own preceptor?

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I'm in Florida and our state law mandates 540 (maybe 560-forgot exactly) hours of clinical time while getting the master's degree for Family Nurse Practitioner.

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