Clinical Expectations and Guidelines

Clinical experiences will be offered with select nursing courses shown in the chart above. Every student must pass both the clinical and theory section of a course to receive credit.

Clinicals will be held once a week and will last approximately 10 hours. For your capstone class in the final semester, your clinical hours will increase to 12 per week. Early clinicals will have the students (6-8) break into groups of 2 for patient assignments while later clinicals in the second year will have the student practicing individually with a preceptor. Clinicals include a pre and post conference to distribute and review assignments, materials, concepts, and goals for the day. Students will be expected to present clinical reports to their peers on the patients for the day.

Our program uses the Oregon Clinical model (Nielsen et al., 2013). This allows students to gradually be exposed to the nursing process and clinical experience as they learn through case studies, skill-based learning, and concept-based learning. Students will then combine these items to provide direct patient care and develop critical thinking skills. Course content and clinical experiences will progressively become more complex to allow for student growth and development. A final clinical immersion experience capstone class will allow the student to practice as nurse with 1:1 preceptor (Nielsen et al., 2013). 

Evaluations will be completed by clinical instructors using clinical evaluation forms adapted to reflect specific outcomes and unique aspects of each course. Additional evaluations include direct observation of students by clinical instructors / preceptors, written assignments, clinical conference contributions by students, and self-assessment (Oermann et al., 2009).

References