What's the furthest you had to travel for a clinical?

BiotoBSNtoFNP · Sep 22, 2014

I am commuting 2 hours and 15 minutes for an np clinical right now. My previously assigned preceptor had to have emergency surgery and was out if commission so my school had to send me somewhere last min! UGH!!!! Its 2 days a week so i have just been staying in a hotel overnight but a two hour drive one or two times a week for 3 months isnt the end of the world i suppose.....?

FinallyRNStatus, BSN · Oct 9, 2014

I had a friend who commuted 60 miles way one way to attend school. Class started at 8am, he would leave at 6am and would barely make it in time for class. Did it for a whole year. When we had clinicals it was even further for him, about 80 miles one way. Of course there was always traffic, props to him!

Wow, sounds like me!!! My nursing school and most my clinical orations were 65 miles+ from my house. Usually it took me 1hr 45mins and I would leave around 6am 3 days a week to get to class by 8am and twice a week I would leave by 5-5:30 to get to clinicals by 7am (thankfully little traffic before 7am and cut down my commute time!). Going home was worse though on days I got out of class at 4:30pm traffic was really bad often taking 2hrs or more if there was an accident. It was very tiring to be on that schedule 5days/week and some days I thought it was going to kill me, literally, as midway through my schooling I fell asleep at the wheel going over 45 miles hour and rammed into the back of a car that stopped at the red light and totaled the whole front end of my car. That shook me up for months!

In my opinion, a long distance commute 1 day a week is completely doable, esp if your school doesn't require a look up at the hospital the day before or an extensive care plan to be done Friday. That alone would mean your commuting that far 2days/week instead of just Saturday. Since you are getting off after 7pm hopefully there will be less traffic too. I know some nursing schools in rural areas require students to attend clinical 2-3hours away every semester, so one semester is not so bad.

onmiwei · Oct 9, 2014

One hour...

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Oct 10, 2014

Has anybody else had to travel far for a clinical?

Since I lived 95 miles from the LVN program that I had attended, I routinely traveled long distances to clinical locations. Now it's all water under the bridge because I have a nice job with mostly nice working conditions, so the sacrifices were worth it.

vintagemother, BSN, CNA, LVN, RN · Oct 10, 2014

One clinical site was 1.5 to 2 hrs away. Most were about 45 mins. Plus I had to drop my son off at child care first.

I barely remember it all now. It was such a blur of busyness and stress.

Like commuter said, it was worth it. As I'm now working as a nurse.

You can do it!!

amandapanda2011 · Oct 13, 2014

Well I'm glad to say that I'm not the only one that has had to travel that far. I'm going on my 3rd weekend going and honestly it's not that bad of a drive as I thought it was. Only bad thing was that we were out in the middle of no where and it's a small hospital....it has been boring so far so MAJOR disappointment

futurebclpn · Oct 14, 2014

My school and clinical sites are a 12 hour drive from where I live.

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Oct 15, 2014

My school and clinical sites are a 12 hour drive from where I live.

If you live 12 hours from your school and clinical practicum sites, I assume you are crossing state lines to travel to school on a regular basis.

futurebclpn · Oct 15, 2014

I live in Canada and my school is in different province from where I live.