Naturally, nurse practitioner students most often would like to get a clinical site secured near where they live. When you’re still attending classes and likely have responsibilities at another job, a close clinical site certainly lessens the stress associated with completing your hours.
Our priority is to place students within an hour travel time of where they live and we are often successful and of course, these are our favorite scenarios!
Unfortunately, with the current COVID situation, it is getting more difficult to find preceptors, so often we do find sites that are a bit further away from students and sometimes our only option is to ask students to travel out of state. This is due to the overwhelm that medical providers feel in their daily practices and many are already booked with students. When our students are willing to travel a few hours, the likelihood of securing a clinical placement for them increases exponentially.
Willingness to travel out of state for your rotation is as close as we get to being able to guarantee placement. We work with preceptors across the nation, and sometimes we have the perfect provider for you (yay!) but it would require interstate travel. If students are willing, we can nearly always find placement for them and help them get one step closer to graduation.
Students who are licensed in a compact nursing state can travel to another compact state for their rotations without obtaining another license in that state. We often ask students if they have family or friends in another state who they can stay with while they complete their clinical hours. This cuts down on cost and opens up the preceptor opportunities.
Traveling is also a wonderful way to increase your exposure to various patient populations. A pediatric rotation in Detroit will likely be a different experience from a pediatric rotation in Tampa. Traveling allows a wider educational experience and also increases your ability to graduate on time.
We always start our search for your preceptor in your first choice location, but being willing to travel is certainly the best route to completing your hours when you need to. At Clinical Preceptor Rescue, we prioritize students’ needs and do our very best to find you the clinical rotation that you need, when you need it.