Clinicals are Criticals For Your Nursing Education

For most jobs, you take your college courses, get your degree and then, fingers crossed, jump right into your profession equipped with basic skills.  If given the opportunity, maybe you’ll intern for a little while so you can shadow people in the job of your choice.

The nursing profession works a little differently. Learning in the classroom and learning in clinicals are both important aspects of nursing education.  In nursing education, you learn from expert faculty members and on the job from the nurses that work with patients each and every day.

Today, we’ll explore the importance of clinicals and talk a little bit about how Nebraska Methodist College elevates its clinical offerings above other schools in the region.

A Path to Excellence

Education at NMC means you learn up-to-date nursing information from classroom material, textbooks, skills labs and simulations. Then, on your first day and subsequent clinical days, you can provide safe and competent care to patients using your critical thinking and clinical reasoning skills. Putting your nursing knowledge and skills to good use are what clinicals are all about.

Another important aspect of your education at NMC is teaching about the idea of caring. Faculty will explain and show you how to comfort a patient who may be scared or who wants to know what’s going on with their treatment plan. NMC’s holistic approach to patient care teaches you the tenets of whole person mind, body and spiritual nursing care in conjunction with educating you on the importance of compassion, kindness and empathy.

Clinicals also help you determine your own path in the nursing world. During clinicals, some nursing students discover what kind of nurse they want to become, such as an emergency room nurse or a pediatrics nurse, while others decide that working in obstetrics, critical care or surgery would be the best fit and most rewarding job for them.

NMC: Not Your Average Experience

NMC faculty is passionate about clinical education. We've previously covered why nursing programs without clinicals may not be all they're cracked up to be. Our nursing students begin clinicals in their first year of school because doing so lets them see early on what it’s like to be on the front lines of nursing care.

NMC’s relationship with the Methodist Health System allows us the opportunity to offer important clinical experiences in many different kinds of nursing.  Our college also has partnerships with other healthcare systems as well as community agencies in and around Omaha. These clinical sites allow our students to learn nursing care in a variety of patient care settings.

Recently, NMC launched the Dedicated Education Unit (DEU), a new way to educate nursing students, which you can read all about at the link. Using this educational model, students are paired with an expert practicing nurse for an entire shift, allowing them to develop a rapport with that nurse and his or her patients, really learning what it’s like to work as a nurse.

Let’s Get Clinical

Clinicals are a critical part of nursing education and a fundamental part of the nursing program at Nebraska Methodist College.

To learn more about the many careers you can experience as a result of your NMC education, be sure to download our Nursing Career Guide today.