Doing Spring Arbor clinical hours where you already work

01What SAU publishes on this

Nothing specific. None of the SAU pages, catalogs or blog posts that could be read says whether students may do clinical hours at their employer, on their own unit, or with a coworker as preceptor. The current catalogs could not be read, so a rule may exist there; the way to find out is to ask your program.

What does apply is the general set of rules every placement meets. The preceptor must fit your track: a certified NP, physician or PA for NP practicums, or for NUR 780B also a master's-prepared nurse in a specialty field. The site goes through the affiliation step. Faculty approve the preceptor and site for the rotation. The full detail is on preceptor requirements.

02Why students look at their employer first

It is a sensible place to start. You already know the clinicians, the organization already knows you, and its employee onboarding may overlap with parts of SAU's compliance list, though SAU still expects your records to be current with its nursing department. A health system with its own clinics may also have an agreement with SAU already, which you can check using the affiliation agreements steps.

The same familiarity raises questions SAU hasn't answered publicly: whether you are there as a student or as staff on a given day, whether your preceptor is also the person who evaluates your paid work, and whether the patients you see fit the course. Faculty will want clear answers to each, which is why the questions below are worth settling first.

03Questions to settle with your program

Put these to your program director or course faculty by SAU email, and keep the reply. If you are unsure whose desk it belongs on, see who to ask at SAU.

• May I do clinical hours at the organization that employs me?
• May I do them on my own unit or department, or only elsewhere in the organization?
• May my manager, or a colleague I work beside, be my preceptor?
• Can clinical hours fall on days I also work a paid shift, if the student time is kept separate?
• Does a setting I know well still count if its patients match the course only in part?
• Is there anything about my employer's standing with SAU, such as a missing agreement, that I should know?

04Keeping student time separate from paid time

The catalog ties a clinical hour to hands-on patient care, at about one patient per hour, and calls the requirement supervised practice hours. Hours you work as a paid RN are a different role, and nothing SAU publishes lets you count them toward a practicum. Plan clinical shifts as clearly separate blocks, logged as a student.

Tell your employer the same thing. If a manager expects you to carry a staff patient load during your student hours, the arrangement is not working as a clinical rotation, and your faculty should hear about it early. How hours are recorded is covered on clinical hour logs.

Think about the practical side too. Working three twelve-hour shifts and then adding clinical days at the same building can wear you down fast, and a tired student sees fewer patients well. Spread clinical days so each one has your full attention.

05Questions to settle with your employer

• Does the organization accept graduate nursing students from outside schools, and who approves that internally?
• Who signs student agreements, and is there already one with Spring Arbor University?
• Will your preceptor have time to teach on your clinical days, or will patient volume crowd it out?
• Are there internal onboarding steps for students that sit apart from your employee file?
• If your role or unit changes partway through the practicum, what happens to the placement?

Get the internal answers before you send anything to SAU. An organization that decides late in the process that it cannot host its own staff as students leaves you restarting the search with little time left.

Write down who told you what, and when. If your employer's answer and SAU's answer ever pull in different directions, a dated note of each conversation makes the conflict easy to raise and quick to resolve.

06If your employer is not an option

An employer may decline to host its own staff as students, and some tracks simply don't match your workplace; a hospital RN heading into a PMHNP or PNP-PC practicum, for instance, usually needs a different kind of setting. Treat that as a signal to begin the wider search early. Finding your own preceptor lists SAU's help, and can't find a preceptor sets out the next moves when leads run dry.

Our placement desk can search outside your employer, within reach of where you live, for a clinician and site that suit your SAU track, and help you prepare what faculty review. SAU's faculty still approve every preceptor and site, and ours reach them fully documented. If your employer says yes to some parts and no to others, such as allowing hours but not on your own unit, tell us, and we can fill the gap rather than replace the whole plan.