Where were your clinicals?

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In Hospitals? Specialty clinics?

How far away did you have to drive?

If it was in hospitals - what department?

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My first nursing clinical was at a nursing home for 1/2 a semester, then we went to med/surg at a hospital, second semester was all med surg....third semester was 1/2 semester of pediatrics (12 hour clinicals) then the second half of the semester was L&D ( 12 hour clinicals)..I am starting my last semester in a few weeks & it's going to be advanced med surg & psych..it can be all mixed up alternating, or 1/2 & 1/2 or some weeks one & some weeks the other...won't know til we start............I drive about 45-50 miles to lecture on campus each way.............and for clinicals about the same.the furthest I ever drove for clinicals my very first semester.....65 miles each way :uhoh3: But I don't care.........it's not forever.......and hey..I figure I'd probaby drive that or pretty close to it when I work as an RN after I graduate so it's not a big deal to me really............;)

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I've had my clinicals in various hospitals.

- medical for several rotations

- surgical (got a day in the O.R. and a day in Day Care)

- maternity

- pediatrics

- respiratory

I've either taken public transit or car pooled to my clinicals.

The closest one was a 5 min skytrain ride away. The farthest took me about half an hour or so by transit.

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i graduated from an rn diploma program and immediately started my clinicals at the hospital/school i attended.

i was on the med/surg, ortho, onc floors.

living in boston, we have a known 'medical area' where sev'l of the leading hospitals are clustered together.

most of my clinicals were from these hospitals in my 2nd and 3rd yrs.

and this medical area was less than a mile from my nsg school/hosp, so we all walked together.

leslie

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Specializes in NICU, High-Risk L&D, IBCLC.

I had clinical for fundamentals in a subacute care facility. For med-surg clinicals (two semesters) I ended up on a thoracic surgery floor and a neurology floor. Pediatric clinical was on a medical/burn unit of a children's hospital, psychiatric clinical at a regular hospital's psych unit (included adult, geriatric, substance abuse, and an ECT unit), and OB clinical at a hospital where we rotated in L&D, PP, and Nursery. We also had several observation days in alternate sites such as ER and OR.

I generally drive about 45-60 minutes to my clinical sites.

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Specializes in orthopaedics.

for the first sememester clincals were at a long term care facility.

next a small hospital to do med surg.

in the spring another hospital to do med/surg with two days when we rotated off the floor, one to spend in surgery with a patient or several patients depending on the type of surgery from pre-op to pacu. the second day off the floor was spent in gi watching colonoscopys enoscopys and such.

today i just finished my summer rotation half of which was 5 weeks spent at a major hospital doing ob the other half at a major childrens hospital in peds.

the furthest i have had to travel to a clinical site so far is about an hour. with our school they are allowed to have a clinical site 50 miles away from campus. i am not sure what the distance ruling is for your school or if they have one in place.

good luck in your program.

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For my first semester starting next month, we will be in a hospital on a Med surge floor all semester, the school is 15min from me the hospital is 30 min tops from me.

Second semester we are in advanced med surge at the same hospital just a different floor i believe

Our thirds semester is one of the toughest, its 6 weeks long and i believe it is the end of med surge at the same hospital.

Fourth and fifth semester its Peds,maternity,Psych,Critical care, geriatrics and Management/leadership clinical. Fourth you get 3 rotations, and fifth you get 3 rotations. Some of those are at the same hospital we started out in, but the rest are At children's hospital in Pittsburgh and other Pittsburgh hospitals. It only takes me 20 min to get to the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, that is where most of the Pittsburghers hospitals are.

i cant wait to start, 3.5 more weeks grrr, what can i do to pass the time

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Specializes in Critical Care/ICU.
so we all walked together.

I miss the comraderie of nursing school. There's just nothing quite like it.

My clinicals were 6-10 weeks each (not necessarily in this order):

-LTC, we worked in a SNF 6 weeks into our program and then a combination SNF/rehab facility later on in the program.

-med/surg (one "beginners" one "advanced" at two different hospitals)

-OB, larbor and deliver and postpartum and nursery. We had a project during this rotation that took me personally to the county milk bank. I spent a day with the RN director. REALLY amazing and interesting! I also visited an RN who was a director of a county run high school for teenage girls with babies. I also went on a home visit with an RN from a mother-newborn wellness program.

-Pediatrics which included 6 weeks acute and 6 weeks in a wonderful residential place that had kids who needed around the clock care. Some of the little ones were there to give mom and dad a break for a week or two. They were vent-dependent or had trachs, almost all had feeding tubes. There were kids who had such exotic problems - I will NEVER forget my hydrocephalic little guy. It was just a really good experience. The nurses were outstanding and under their watchful eye they allowed the students to run the show. They were absolute professional experts! I can't say enough good about this place.

-Psych, both acute inpatient and chronic residential. I LOVED this clinical, especially the acute portion. My most memorable patients were an extremely manic 21 year old bipolar, an 18 year old young man who was experiencing his first break after taking ectasy, a schizophrenic young woman who actually opened up to me and told me about the "voices," a woman in her mid forties whose teenage son was killed in a car accident a year prior and she was suffering MAJOR depression with suicidal ideology, and a poor unfortunate young Asian woman with a tramatic past who was in seclusion - she was catatonic and she would continuously walk around her room "swimming." Non stop.

-Perceptorship that included 120 hours of working 1:1 with an RN in our choice of practice. I personally chose ICU and worked in the ICU of a VA hospital.

Also during our program if there was anything we wanted to observe our instructors were very good about setting something up for us. While there were standards of what we HAD to complete, we could do and see as much as we wanted to. I observed 3 general surgeries during med/surg, and a c-section in OB, first time I saw an RN use a defibrillator was during an observational in a CCU and I got to check out the Cath Lab and hang out with an RT for a day. All of this focus on what I was interested in really helped when it came time to apply for that first job!

Everything was very close to home for me. Some people who lived farther away had much more travel.

Wow, long post. Thanks for helping me bring back those memories! My daughter just applied to the same school I went to. I can't wait for her to go through this awesome experience!

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

Mine were first semester at a LTC, second and third were med/surg at the hospital with rotations out to dialysis, hospice, amb surg, OR, endo, a free clinic, and PACU. Third semester was critical care at the hospital in ICU and the ER along with Psych which was at a day program, my fifth and final was OB and Peds at the hospital with Trends which consisted of 45 hours of preceptorship anywhere we wanted to do it. Our schools policy is the facility has to be within 100 miles of the schools campus. First 3 semesters I drove 1 1/2 hours to clinicals. Last 2 was 15 minutes from home.

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Specializes in Critical Care/ICU.

YIKES!! I did a week in outpatient dialysis and hospice too.

I bet I'm forgetting more.

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My first placement was on a complex continuing care ward for 13 weeks and this term I am on a orthopedic surgery floor for 13 weeks. It takes me about 30 minutes to get up to the hospital for both terms.

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Our toughest clinical was peds, we had it on a childrens burn unit , it was heart renching .

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