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Discussion

Senior Practicums

I am a senior nursing student and just found out that only 30 students out of the 120 in my cohort will be given a practicum. The unlucky students not found worthy enough to have a practicum slot will be thrown into med-surg clinical group regardless of if you are interested in med-surg or not. Am I naive or do most schools accommodate all of their students to get a practicum? I believe that the one-on-one experience the practicum offers is crucial to students learning in performing everyday nursing tasks. Clinical only offers a snapshot of what nurses do everyday and students are only allowed to do a small part of the nursing role when there are 6 or so other students present. So should I raise some hell to my schools nursing department about this or is this a normal occurrence in nursing schools?

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    • Admin

    Even those programs that have all students complete practicums cannot grant all of them their first choice. My top three choices for my senior practicum? L&D, peds, ICU. Where did I actually do my practicum? PACU, an area I had not previously even heard of.

    There must be a preceptor willing to work with students. Those preceptors will likely not match up to what the students want. That means students must be sent where there is a willing preceptor. How it was decided with my class was that those with the highest grades were much more likely to get their first or second choice. Those who were left were then divvied up to whatever unit/shift could take them.

    Besides, the vast majority of learning how to be a nurse comes with orientation, not when in school.

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    • Experts

    We were warned that not all students would get their first choice. It only makes sense that everyone can't crowd the same popular areas. And it makes sense that those with the best grades get rewarded with being placed first.

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    • Author

    But did everyone get one? We filled out a preference sheet but only 30 get one regardless. It would be ok if not everyone got their top picks because of course that can't feasibly be accommated but not everyone gets a practicum

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    Everyone in my cohort technically got a "practicum," but many students were placed with preceptors that were in purely administrative roles which meant they got *zero* experience providing direct patient care and learning those associated skills. Our preferences were not considered; neither geographical site nor area of practice. We got what we got.

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