What do you/your school do about no-call/no-shows in clinical?

TooterIA · May 24, 2011

Failed clinic. There is no excuse for not calling. Call the clinical site and leave a message for the instructor to call the student, call another student and get the instructor's number, call the school and ask for the instructor's number (or talk to another instructor who could call the clinical instructor), and my number is written on their papers I give them on the first day of clinic. There are MANY ways to obtain the instructor's phone number. No excuse. It is clearly written in the course syllabus that a no-call no-show results in failed clinic.

BigBadInstructor · May 24, 2011

Absolutely, fail the clinical. In our program, fail a clinical and you are dismissed from the program. Our community healthcare facilities, encourage us to adher to employee standards, which are no call, no show, no job. There are ways that students can call in for sickness, late, and such, and these are described within clinical orientation, student handbooks, and program orientation. This should not be a new concept for students when they enter a clinical rotation. Within our program, if you are more than 15 minutes late to clinical or miss report, you do a make-up day, and there is only on make-up day per semester. There are always the extraordinary circumstances that are accommodated, but the bottom line is the student is responsible for their attendance and their learning.

bsyrn, ASN, RN · May 24, 2011

In our program also a no call no show is a clinical failure. As it should be.

caliotter3 · May 24, 2011

We had been instructed to, and given the number for, the clinical site. No one was a no call, no show. There was no reason for it.

Whispera, MSN, RN · May 26, 2011

My personal policy is that a no-call/no-show = failure, but it's never happened, and I don't know if the school would back me up if I tried to fail a student for it, if it happened. I don't feel there's any excuse to not call (well, maybe flood, tornado, hurricane, hit by a flying cow), but I'd want documentation.

kubivern · May 29, 2011

As many others have stated - no show and no call is a failed grade for that clinical and an educational warning. Our students do not, though, fail the course unless they have two no show and no calls (resulting in two educational warnings total). There have been extenuating circumstances obviously - major family crises (death in family, injured children) and even car accidents (it is hard to call from the ER when your phone is in the totaled vehicle). If there is an extenuating circumstance, we have allowed students up to three misses, but that has been very, very rare.

Rudeness aside, the major reason for this policy is the lack of clinical opportunities - we simply have just enough clinical opportunities to meet the Board of Nursing expectations, so we have little opportunities for make-up sessions.

jmqphd · Jun 1, 2011

We had an ice storm and a student was spinning out on a bridge, unable to get traction, unable to go forward or back up. She managed to get through to another student and let us know.

The student in the original post has been put on given a warning, and put on a "success plan" (another way of saying, you have to be better than perfect from here on, or you are gone.)

The story that has evolved is that the student has HTN and her medication had been switched and she was very sick, not doing well. I don't know... like I said, she can explain that to me in pre-conference and I'll send her home, or to the ER. And I have sent students home that I thought were not well enough to go on the clinical unit.

So far, no problems with the program not backing us up.

cnmbfa · Jun 12, 2011

Automatic failure, just as you would be fired if you did this in the work place. This has happened to me twice, before I began just failing them. One didn't come because he was out drinking the night before. He did it again in another class. The other person was very manipulative with psych problems. I now know it is a HUGE warning sign, and will no longer even think ofgiving them another chance.