How many of y'all are assigned clinical sites that in another town? Last semester, our program only offered one LTC facility for first semester that was in town. This semester, the one I will be starting, doesn't offer any in town.
There are 2 that are located in a town 29 miles away, and another that is 19 miles away. I know it doesn't seem bad but that is 35 mins to get to the first one and 25 mins for the second one. It seems like in a city of 40k people, our school would have been able to secure a clinical agreement with one of the dozen LTC facilities in this city.
That gas is going to get expensive on top of commuting to class 4 days a week. We have clinicals twice a week.
We are on the edge of the North Maine Woods so to do our Psych rotation we spend 3 day weekends 180 miles away in Bangor.
We would do the same in Wichita, KS. About the same distance too. Really didnt bother me. We carpooled and piled into a few hotel rooms. We had quite a good time too!
Clinical sites could be up to 100 mile radius from the school per policy.. So driving was not uncommon. No one had to drive that far but it was possible.. My school was several towns away so I always had to drive an hour to school and an hour back and up to 1.5 hours to clinicals.. Several of my class mates lived even farther from the school
My first clinical site was about 35 miles away and it took me about 45 minutes-1 hour to drive. I had to be there at 0645 but since I'm paranoid about being late I would leave the house at like 0500 just in case anything happened on the way. I live in a fairly large city of almost 2 million and I ended up with probably the furthest clinical site, on the far end of town and I live clear on the other end. Unfortunately that's how things work when so many schools are competing for clinical sites. Luckily my 2nd site was only about 15 miles away and my next one is only about 5 miles away. But I'm sure my luck will soon change :)
Last semester I was lucky enough to get the only clinical site in my town. My school has two campuses that they split our program up on, one is a 25 min drive and the other is a 40 min drive. We don't get a choice...we alternate campuses, so starting Monday I get to drive three cities away to class. The closest possible clinical site for me this semester is 30 mins away. Such is life. We don't live in the "big towns" in our county. If I want to go anywhere besides Walmart or McDonalds I have to drive.
MSNrunner
59 Posts
When I was in nursing school some of our clinical sites were up to 90 minutes away and we did 12 hour shifts