What's the farthest you've gone for clinicals?

[greeniebean]

Hey guys. I'm all set to apply to nursing school when I somehow wondered onto a page of my school's nursing website I've never been before. I clicked on a few links including one that went into detail about clinicals. Well out of the blue I read that in the last 2 semesters of the program a few of the clinical sites are considered "non-commutable" and temporary housing has to be found and paid for by the student. I have 2 small children, so this would be impossible for me. When were they planning on telling us! This page was buried in the site, you have to click on at least 5 links to get to it. It also says that at first they try not to give you a clinical site more than an hour away from your home. Yeah- I live an hour and a half from my school already, so an hour away to me is really 2 and a half hours.

Is this typical? Has anyone every had a "non commutable" clinical site. What's the farthest you've ever had to go?

[caliotter3]

Furthest was 98 miles. Usually between 75-80 miles. One morning almost got killed on the freeway on my way to clinical. CI was not sympathetic. Told me if the commute was that bad (it was), then find someplace to stay. So I had to get a hotel room for the remaining clinical days. Thank goodness I had a credit card to put the room charges on.

[9livesRN, BSN, RN]

i am now 1 hour away, before i was crossing 5 counties basically from 1 coast to another coast of florida, i live 40 minutes from tampa, and was doing clinicals 15 minutes from daytona.

it took me 2 hours to get there, and almost 3 with friday afternoon traffic to come back!

[goodstudentnowRN]

Hmmm...I am 90 minutes away from my clinical site. I thought that was too much but by reading other students' posts I realize it is nothing.

[haunani, BSN, RN]

Our program offers 2 clinical sites. They recommend and prefer that we use both sites at some point in the program, but it's not required. The first one is 15 minutes from home and across the street from my job. The 2nd is 1.5 hours away.

(I'm 50 minutes from campus, which is pretty much in the middle of the two sites)

[cursedandblessed]

we don't get choices unfortunately. there are clinical sites from 15 minutes away to an hour and 30 minutes away. there are about six hospitals we use.

[SuesquatchRN, BSN, RN]

My school was 67 miles away, 1 3.4 hours by car. mountain road. Clinicals were 15 beyond that.

[Meriwhen, ASN, BSN, MSN, RN]

The furthest one was one in the middle of nowhere that took me over an hour to drive to, plus I had to use GPS to find it since Google Maps had left off some key directions. I don't know how many miles away it was, but I went through several cell phone dead zones along the way.

I was lucky the rest of the time though: most facilities were within 20 minutes' driving. In fact, it usually took me longer to drive to school than to most clinical sites.

[lumberjack]

Had friends in nursing school in Flagstaff, AZ (NAU) that had to go over a hundred miles, sometimes 200 or more for clinicals all across the state. Sucked big time, made me glad I'm at UNMC and a 5 minute walk to 90% of my clinicals.

[CrufflerJJ, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

55 miles (each way) or thereabouts for my classes & clinicals. You get used to (OK, almost used to) waking up at 4:30AM to make sure you're at your 7AM clinical in time. Not fun, but doable if it's what you really WANT.

[madnurse2b]

Wow.

I whine about my 20 minutes across town. I'm now over that!

I'm not worthy.

[greeniebean]

I'm used to getting up early, I just can't move to a clinical site for weeks! I would rather get up early and drive. Anyways thanks to everyone for responding!!