Clinical Laboratory Experiences

Clinical lab settings are chosen by the faculty to provide experiences congruent with theory material. A variety of agencies are used throughout the program to provide students with a variety of experiences and also to expose students to many professional nursing roles. Agencies include day care centers, nursing homes, hospitals, clinics, and various public health agencies.

The clinical laboratory site varies depending upon the specific nursing course. A number of clinical facilities in the South Jersey-Philadelphia area provide rich resources for student clinical experiences. The scheduled times for all nursing laboratories will be made available to students at the start of each semester.

Students should plan for increased demands of their time for clinical laboratory experiences as they progress through the program. Evening and weekend clinical lab hours may be required. Each clinical experience is planned by the instructor and coordinated with agency services. Because of this, each clinical placement may start and end at a different time. Students are responsible for their own transportation.

Students are expected to be prepared for nursing clinical laboratory courses. For some clinical experiences it is necessary for students to go to the clinical agency the day before the lab day to interview their clients and gather data in order to prepare nursing care plans. Failure to do this preparation satisfactorily will result in the student's dismissal that day from clinical lab. This will count as an unexcused absence.

During clinical laboratory experiences personal communication with individuals not involved in the experience is to be limited to personal emergencies only. Violation of this policy will result in failure to meet standards of professional behavior.

Nursing laboratory courses are corequisites of nursing theory courses. Each theory lab course must be taken together and both must be passed to progress in the curriculum.

Failure of a theory course will also result in a failure of the corequisite laboratory course. Conversely, failure of a nursing laboratory course will result in a failure of the corequisite theory course. Students who fail the clinical course for documented unsafe practice are not eligible for readmission to the nursing major. A student will receive a grade of D in the theory course if the clinical lab is failed at the end of the semester, provided that the student's theory grade is 75 or above. (See policy for Readmission to Major/Repeating a Nursing Course.)