Counting and logging your SAU clinical hours

01What counts as a clinical hour at SAU

SAU's 2023-24 Graduate Catalog keeps the definition short: clinical practice hours are the actual time you spend caring for or working with a patient. It adds that one patient per hour is the typical pace. It is the only definition SAU publishes, and it asks for more than clocking in and out of a clinic.

Read it literally. Time spent with a patient, from the history and exam to explaining the plan, fits. The catalog doesn't mention charting after the visit, travel, orientation or waiting between patients, and it doesn't say they are excluded either. Ask your clinical faculty before you count any of them, and keep their answer.

The Nurse Educator internship follows a different rule by design. The 2023-24 catalog splits NUR 660 into 50 direct-care hours and 100 hours in a nursing education setting, so most of those hours involve students and teaching rather than patients.

02The totals your log has to reach

Current SAU program pages put the FNP at 625 hours; the AGPCNP, PMHNP and PNP-PC at 500 apiece; and the Nurse Educator and MSN/MBA students' NUR 780B practicum at 125. Certificate totals depend on your earlier training, and DNP students build toward a 1,000-hour post-baccalaureate total.

Some SAU sources disagree with each other, including an older SAU article with higher PMHNP and PNP figures and an RN-to-MSN Nurse Educator page whose hours don't match the tuition page. We keep every figure, its source and each conflict on the clinical hours page. Certificate students should also read which prior hours may transfer.

In the 2023-24 catalog, NUR 680 carries 125 clinical hours for every 2 credits. SAU doesn't publish how many hours belong in each practicum semester, so confirm your per-semester target with faculty when the course opens. Numbering may differ now, so confirm the numbers on your own plan with your advisor.

03Where the hours get logged

No SAU web page names a clinical logging system. Students report on nursing forums that SAU FNP students record every patient they see in Typhon, a clinical tracking platform, and that those logs sit alongside SOAP notes, case presentations and module assignments. That is a student account, not SAU policy.

Your practicum course in Brightspace is where the current instructions will live. Look there for the system, the fields you have to complete and any preceptor sign-off, and follow the course's version whenever it differs from what a classmate tells you. The MySAU and Brightspace page explains how SAU's other systems fit together.

If the course asks for something you can't find, such as a sign-off step or a patient category, ask in the first week rather than the last. A log built on the wrong template is slow to rebuild.

04Habits that keep a log clean

Log so your numbers match everyone else's records

• Log the same day, while you still remember who you saw and for how long.
• Leave out names, dates of birth and anything else that identifies a patient. HIPAA training is on SAU's compliance list for good reason.
• Keep a short personal tally of dates and hours that matches your preceptor's schedule, in case a system entry is ever questioned.
• Log only time with an approved preceptor at an approved site. SAU says both must be approved for every rotation.
• Record the patient population for each visit if your course asks for it, so a gap in children, older adults or another group shows early.
• Compare your running total with the semester target every week or two.

None of this is required by any published SAU rule. It is simply what makes a log easy to defend.

05Audits and late surprises

Students report that SAU audits clinical hours, and one graduate wrote in 2019 that an audit near the end of the program meant extra hours before finishing. SAU hasn't published an audit policy, so treat any hour you can't support as an hour you might have to repeat.

The remedy is dull and dependable: reconcile your log with your preceptor at the end of each week, and settle any mismatch while the day is still fresh for both of you. If a semester is ending short, raise it with clinical faculty before the course closes, not after the grade is in.

Already behind? Our page on falling behind on clinical hours covers the options, including adding a second preceptor, which still needs SAU's approval.

06Hours outside the NP practicums

Not every SAU program logs hours the same way, and a few don't log preceptor hours at all.

• Nurse Educator and MSN/MBA: 125 direct-care hours in NUR 780B, where current SAU pages allow a certified NP, physician, PA or master's-prepared nurse in a specialty field as preceptor. Nurse Educator students also complete the NUR 660 internship described above.
• DNP: the 2023-24 catalog sets 1,000 post-baccalaureate hours in total. If you arrive with under 500 practicum hours, the catalog adds three one-credit NUR 880 practicum courses, described as faculty-led clinical immersion. See NUR 880.
• RN-to-BSN: SAU describes the program's clinical hours as built into the classroom, and there is no external preceptor, so this kind of log doesn't apply.