Junior nursing students in the population health clinical will follow a new split-rotation model this spring semester, cutting off-campus clinical hours from 96 to 48 and replacing the remainder with 24 hours of lab simulations, according to Dean of the School of Nursing & Health Innovations Joane Moceri.
Moceri says the change is the result of two constantly fluctuating factors: the number of students assigned to population health clinicals and the amount of available clinical positions.
The number of students in population health clinicals increased from 90 in the fall to 140 students this semester. At the same time, some clinical locations cut back student positions from four to two, which may have been due to staffing levels, client needs, capacity to oversee students, safety considerations and student learning opportunities, according to Moceri.
Additionally, while there are enough adjunct faculty within the nursing program, the program lacks faculty with specialized experience in population health to accompany fewer students across additional clinical settings, Moceri says.
There are four clinical rotations included in the third and fourth year curriculum: population health, acute care, chronic care and a capstone experience.
Rotation adjustments would disrupt students’ junior-year curriculum, which is why placement at a population health clinical needed to be completed at this time, according to Moceri.
Since there is no state-mandated requirement for the number of clinical hours students take, the nursing curriculum has the flexibility to adjust professional practice hours both on and off campus. The split-rotation model was previously used in 2023 and 2024, according to Moceri.
“All these things piled on at one time, and we made the decision to go with quality [over quantity],” Moceri said. “48 hours of quality clinical is worth so much more than 96 hours in a clinical that doesn't really want you there. This is not new. It's not unusual. It's something that we have done very successfully [in the past].”
Junior Neva Foy, however, feels like the rotation change deprives her of beneficial hours working with vulnerable populations.
“It's really valuable for us to come in, offer an extra set of hands and educate people,” Foy said. “My placement is at a high school for underprivileged youth that can get their GED [diploma], but I'm only getting six rotations instead of 12 [before] someone takes my place at that site for the last half of the semester.”
Also among frustrated students is junior Sophie Drucker. She feels like those in the population health rotation got the short end of the stick.
“If they knew our cohort was too big, there could have been more planning to supplement those lost clinical hours,” Drucker said. “We shouldn't be at a disadvantage. We all want to practice and gain our clinical skills, so to only [have] half the semester [at an] off-campus clinical limits that.”
Moceri says the decision to reduce clinical hours, which was made in December, did not come as a surprise, though she acknowledges that reactions from students have varied.
On-campus lab simulations will replace more hours of clinical placement, which Moceri considers to be highly effective in reaching the curriculum’s learning outcomes. She believes “one hour in simulation [has] the learning value of three hours in an off-campus setting.”
She says some students find 48 hours at their clinical location to be more than enough. But other students, like Foy, believe that missing out on valuable hours of on-site experience is “unfair.”
“I came in with the expectation that I would be getting all [four semesters] of clinical hours,” Foy said. “A big part of population health is empathy and communication, which you don't [practice] in [skills-based] acute care. If nurses aren't able to develop this, it can really impact patient care in the future.”
In response to this, Moceri says the concept-based curriculum prioritizes transferable learning and critical thinking.
“We believe the concepts that [students] learn in any setting can be applied in any other setting,” Moceri said. “Nursing is a thinking profession. We do things, but the most important thing for a nurse to bring into a patient setting is their brain and their knowledge.”
Kalena O’Connell is the News and Managing Editor for The Beacon. She can be reached at oconnell27@up.edu.
