Doing your Clarkson clinicals where you work

What Clarkson allows

Your employer is a natural first call, because Clarkson makes sure you have one: the 2021-22 graduate handbook says all graduate nursing students must work as registered nurses throughout the program. The same handbook allowed clinical and practicum hours at the student's place of work, in a department other than the student's own, with work hours and clinical hours kept on separate records. The rule reaches every graduate path that uses a preceptor, the education and administration practicums included.

The November 2023 rotation sheets for all three nurse practitioner tracks repeated the department rule. Working there does not change the current catalog's requirement that the preceptor and site be approved before you register, so an employer placement follows the same placement process as any other site.

Keeping paid time and clinical time apart

Clarkson wanted your employment hours and your clinical hours recorded apart, and the practical reading is simple: a clinical shift is a student shift. Log it in Typhon under your approved preceptor, and keep it off your time card.

Time worked as staff does not turn into clinical time because you learned something on shift. Keeping the two apart on paper also protects you if a manager, a payroll office or course faculty ever asks which role you were in on a given day.

Schedule clinical days as their own blocks where you can. A 160-hour course needs roughly 11 hours a week over a 15-week term, by our arithmetic, and a preceptor in another department can plan around your RN rotation only if you hand them a clear, steady pattern.

Employer systems and employee priority

Your staff login is not your student access. Clarkson's November 2023 sheets instructed students employed by Nebraska Medicine to reach the Director ahead of any preceptor hours and obtain a second Epic user ID for their student role; the 2025 resources page added that anyone placed at Nebraska Medicine needs Epic training. Ask any employer's education or placement office how students document before your first clinical day.

Being on staff can also move you up a queue. Children's Nebraska says its own team members get priority for advanced practice student requests, and Clarkson's 2025 resources page said CHI Health prioritizes its employees. Clarkson says its educational partnership with Nebraska Medicine extends to that system's staff and counts "preceptorship and clinical opportunities" among the perks. The Nebraska Medicine guide and the health system guide cover those routes.

Filling the courses your employer cannot

Not every employer can host every course in a track. An FNP student at a hospital may find adult primary care in-house but no pediatric practice for the 110 pediatric hours of NRS 840, or no women's health provider for the 120 hours of NRS 842. A PMHNP student may have no licensed therapist on staff for the 50 therapist hours of NRS 856.

That is where Clarkson students bring us in. Our placement desk finds preceptors outside your employer for the courses it cannot cover, checks them against Clarkson's rules, and times those searches around the courses you keep in-house, so the whole plan runs one course at a time without a gap. Tell us your employer and track in the form on this page.