Spring/Summer 2009 Placement Cycle:

Hospitals are encouraged to extend their unit availability once/year, in August. This will hopefully result in less work for the hospitals, accommodate placement periods for schools on various terms, and provide schools increased visibility into potential placement opportunities.

August 4-8, 2008 -- Training sessions held to show both hospitals and schools how to enter information related to preceptor placements (sessions will be in-person and WebEx).

August 11-22, 2008 -- Hospitals to add preceptor unit availability and review, confirm and extend cohort availability through December 2009 or, ideally, into February 2010. We understand some hospitals will need to modify this availability as census and building plans change, and these changes can be done on an as-needed basis throughout the year.

August 25 - September 12, 2008
(Preceptor requests are extended through November 14)
Schools make requests for all courses that start January through the end of the Spring or Summer 2009 term. We hope this timeframe will allow school coordinators to return from summer break and settle into the term before focusing on placements.

September 15 - October 3, 2008
(Preceptor placement decisions are extended through December 12)
Hospitals will review proposal requests and make placement decisions. Hospitals are encouraged to accept long-standing / historic placements and to decline proposals they know they cannot accommodate as quickly as possible, as a courtesy to schools. For those placement requests that need to be reviewed by the floor managers, we hope the three-week timeframe will provide sufficient leeway to check in and return a response to the requesting school.

The Centralized Clinical Placement System is an internet-based tool designed to help address and improve the growing nursing shortage problem. Underutilization of existing clinical placement sites for nursing students and an inefficient clinical placement system combine to form one of the barriers to increasing the number of qualified nurses.

This system brings together school and clinical agency information in a centralized, online format. This enables schools and clinical agencies to achieve a higher level of operating performance: (i) schools can rapidly match clinical placement opportunities for student cohorts (group of 8-10 students) and (ii) clinical agencies can effectively manage a single schedule (for all participating schools) while increasing the number of students within their agency, which provides direct observation and potential identification of future employees.

Thank you to the Betty Irene Moore Nursing Initiative for their financial support for this project.