By Prof. Janet Kazibwe MSN, BSN, PHN, RN
During this fall 2021 quarter, I discovered a new way of handling the clinical placement of students in an agency that had limited the visits for the students. There were 8 students in this clinical rotation, and after collaboration with the clinical site educator, the outcome was beneficial to the agency and met all the students’ clinical hours despite limited visits.
The clinical site educator and I shared the responsibility of ensuring that all students were fully engaged during their clinical time. The solution was to have some portion of the hours spent shadowing experienced staff.
Let me share with you the experience of one student who spent part of her clinical hours shadowing a surveyor: “My role in helping [the surveyor] was gathering and making copies of the staff portfolios for the staff that the surveyors were going to look into.”
Overall, I learned a tremendous amount from shadowing [the surveyor] for an entire day shift. It was a hectic and overwhelming shift and there was not one second, other than lunch, where I was not doing something incredibly important. I learned that as a hospital it is extremely important to have a baseline for competencies at all times throughout the year for all employees so that if surveyors do come at any random moment the hospital will be prepared.
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We are so thankful for dedicated educators like Prof. Kazibwe who go the extra mile to find solutions that meet the needs of our students and the requirements of the profession. “How wonderful to be wise, to analyze and interpret things” (Ecclesiastes 8:1a, NLT).