<p>My daughter looked at a nursing school in a rural area. The students travel 1 - 2 hours for clinicals, often spending the night between 2 shifts. We were told that many of the students have family and friends to stay with in the big cities the hospitals they use are located in. We don't. It sounds like a lot of money for gas and hotels. That school was crossed off the list. Does anyone have any insight into accounting for the location of clinicals when looking at a school or other factors to consider when picking a school, which may not be on their website?</p>
<p>This is an important question to ask - beyond the couple examples of clinical locations the college may list on their website.</p>
<p>It is best to try to find a nursing program that is within close proximity to at least one good-sized hospital. It may not avoid the need for a car, but it will likely reduce the need for many long trips. </p>
<p>It can be a real hassle to go to a nursing program in the middle of nowhere. When you are not making long drives, you are doing your clinicals in state prisons.</p>
<p>In larger metro areas, you hopefully will find most clinical locations are accessible by mass transit, because keeping a car in a major city can be very expensive in terms of parking and insurance. </p>
<p>My daughter is going to school in a city with a big hospital within walking distance. However, they were told they still need a car for clinicals. I think part of the reason is that they spend some clinical time at facilities other than a hospital. I understand her program also tries to place students in some clinicals that are close to their homes in nearby cities.</p>
<p>Even if the school’s not in the middle of nowhere, you should plan on there being travel of some kind. My d goes to a school in a decent sized urban area with two large regional medical centers. Even with two hospitals in town, getting really good experience can require some travel. The student nurses will go to the state mental hospital (about 70 miles) for the mental health clinicals and to a specialty children’s hospital (about 80 miles) during the Peds rotation. The Peds rotation at the specialty hospital does require an overnight stay so the students can do two days of clinicals (Friday/Saturday) and limit the number of trips they need to take. </p>
<p>I agree with Charlieschm that it is better to have a car once clinicals start and, yes, to budget for transportation as an added expense. Not all clinicals will be at the closest hospital. I can see one of the regional medical centers from my office window (I work on the campus where d attends school), but that’s not the hospital with the trauma center or the cardiac cath lab. Most hospitals have a psych ward, but can’t give a student the same amount of exposure as the state mental hospital. And the very first clinical might well be at a nursing home. In some cases, it might take less time (and maybe less gas) to drive 70 miles on the highway than to drive across a major metropolitan area! Most of the students will get a group a carpool.</p>
<p>As already stated, location of hospitals and clinical opportunities is extremely important. We were told in nursing open houses that students were expected to have transportation. D spent a lot of time on buses and in carpools in years 1-3 of nursing school because I stubbornly (and stupidly) resisted having her take her car to school. Her nursing school work has included clinical experiences in several hospitals, home care and hospice visits, trips to addiction treatment centers, nursing fraternity volunteering events, nursing home practicums, VA hospital events for student nurses, and similar experiences where transportation was absolutely necessary. Transportation has also been needed for an off-campus NCLEX review class, and a few off-campus meetings. </p>
<p>The kids with the cars end up under significant pressure to drive others and are always trying to get contributions towards gas money (keep up insurance!), and the kids without cars are constantly trying to find rides even when public transportation is available. Sometimes the buses just don’t go to the areas where the student nurses have to be, or they don’t run at convenient times. The more public transportation is available, the better for everyone. </p>
<p>When D was applying to schools, she definitely focused on the hospitals that were available. (She was committed to nursing and knew a lot more about nursing programs than I did at the time.) Her preference was a program where she could have clinical experiences at different hospitals, ideally where there would also be focuses on different medical specialties. She even researched the US News top hospitals to see which ones were near schools that she was considering! </p>
<p>Something that wasn’t mentioned is that some student nurses also want to have work opportunities while in school. As a Senior, D and many of her fellow students are now holding down student nurse jobs in local hospitals. We’re in an area where there is allegedly a glut of nurses due to the number of nursing schools (Western PA) so that having this work experience is viewed by some students as being both an opportunity to get “into” hospitals and to stand out from the crowd. Finding student nurse jobs might be much harder, obviously, if there are few hospitals and clinical opportunities near a school.</p>
<p>^^Good point! I think every student in d’s cohort has some kind of health care job, with hospitals being preferable to nursing homes. A student needs work experience in health care, and to get that, one needs to be able to get off campus.</p>
<p>It is one of the reasons why going to nursing school closer to a large city gives more options for clinicals. However, I went to nursing school in San francisco (30 years ago) my psych, senior adult and peds rotations where outside of the SF and required a car but all were under 45 mins away from the school.</p>