Do you serve as a clinical site for Nursing Students from your local community college or university? Here are a couple of tips to take the experience to the next level:
Consistent communication
Provide consistent communication with the educational entity. If your organization agrees to be a clinical site for nursing students, it is important to be as engaged as possible with the nursing program who is coming to visit. The experience that the schools and students have with your organization is key in promoting positive PR within your community. Roll out the red carpet for them and make them feel as welcome as you would a potential resident and their family.
Develop an internal team that will interact with the students and instructors
This team should be made up of nurses, CNAs, Director of Nursing and/or the primary contact for the nursing school. The primary goal of this group is to support the idea of consistent communication above and to make the students and instructors feel welcome.
When you bring on new employees, agency staff, or volunteers, one of the first things that must be done is to educate them on the pertinent policies and procedures of your organization. This is also true for nursing students. Provide a handbook or orientation program for the students so they know what to expect and how to act in your particular environment. Providing a high level overview on the regulations to be followed in nursing homes is incredibly important. Not only does it help them understand the regulatory environment in which we operate, but will allow them to compare and contrast with acute rules and regs later in their acute clinical rotation.
Hosting nursing clinicals is a privilege for the organization and its employees. Frame it as a benefit that you see them as role models and examples to be part of educating the next generation of nurses. Becoming a long-term care nurse, especially in the nonprofit field, is incredibly rewarding. We want students to be exposed to the positive aspects as opposed to quickly getting swallowed up in the system. If they have a good experience the students may come back to work in the field or for your organization.
In addition to the prep work your organization does for the students, understanding the philosophies and expectations of the nursing program is important as well. What are their policies and procedures regarding clinicals? What information do they provide the students about long-term care before exposing them to our field? The more information that flows between both entities, the better experience everyone will have.
Allow access to resident information
Providing access to resident information is a major component to improve the learning and experience of a student. If using electronic medical records, provide login to help students and instructors get used to using EMRs and gain valuable information about the resident. A key competency of any nurse is to be able to assess the individual they are caring for. The more information that they have to make an appropriate assessment, the better prepared they will be care for the resident. This is true for employees as well.
If your organization policies don’t allow for access to the EMR, provide the instructors/students with names and basic histories of the residents they will come in contact with during their time. Resident information is sacred, and it is a good idea to have them sign HIPAA and confidentiality waivers as appropriate. It’s to everyone’s benefit to find an appropriate and legal path to support information exchange and sharing.
Experience, Experience, Experience – it must be positive
The long-term care clinical component is often the first experience a student has with long-term care. The better the experience, the more viable our sector will look the students when they graduate. Our collective image improves when people have good experience in our buildings.
All staff should be welcoming and willing to spend time with the students. In addition to what they learn in the classroom, employees are a major factor in helping the students understand the nurses’ role in long-term care. This is accomplished by promoting good working habits and staff willingness to set the bar high for other clinical experiences the students may have.
Have your team spend time in a group setting talking to the students about why they work in aging services and what they gain from the experience. All of us have a story and all of us benefit from having a platform in which to share it. These stories can serve as inspiration to the students and help them find their “why” in aging services.
Here is what shouldn’t happen when you agree to be a clinical site
While many clinical experiences are positive, some can be less than desirable and brings the image of an organization down. They seem pretty straight forward, but they still happen every day.
- The key contact or Director of Nursing agrees to be a clinical site, but doesn’t return calls or connect with instructors at all. This sends the message that the clinical experience may not be positive.
- CNAs and nurses are told the day of arrival that the students will be shadowing them. This automatically sets everyone up for a bad experience, especially if one or two individuals call in. This can lead to the staff treating students as a burden they have to bear and greet them with an eye roll.
- It is not advisable for the staff or the organization to expect the students to fill in staffing gaps while they are there to learn.
Organization culture is the key for successful partnerships with nursing schools. It is also the critical foundation for providers to be successful in recruiting and retaining staff. Our commitment to you is unwavering. We will continue to provide resources, collaborations, education and information to help you be an employer of choice. The information above came from a candid conversation with a few nursing schools in the state about their experiences. The group was gathered along with a couple of members to help advise LeadingAge Kansas on how to develop best practices for clinical sites. Over the next year, this group will advise and help us develop tools for our workforce initiative.
