Accelerated BSN Clinicals Provide Experiential Learning
Unlike with many professions — where you likely don’t get real-life work experience until starting your first job — clinical learning experiences are part of your nursing education. For your Accelerated BSN clinicals, you’ll be able to build your clinical judgment skills in a variety of settings.
With a wealth of clinical hours, you’ll graduate from our 16-month Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing ready for a life-changing and personally rewarding career. You’ll also finish our ABSN program ready to sit for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX-RN®) — the nationwide exam all nursing graduates must pass in order to practice as a licensed, registered nurse.
To ensure you gain this diverse nursing experience over such an accelerated time frame, you’ll begin clinical learning experiences in your first semester. Don’t worry, though. You will have time to grow and build your nursing practice throughout each semester of the nursing program.
Simulation Provides a Dose of Reality
As part of CSP’s clinical education, ABSN students participate in simulation at the ABSN learning sites in St. Paul, MN, and Portland, OR. During these activities, students work in groups under the guidance of an instructor to practice responding to various simulated patient care scenarios. For example, you may learn how to manage childbirth or how to respond to an unresponsive patient.
In simulation, you will use human patient simulator manikins to practice the skills you have learned in lab. They’ll also help you practice the critical thinking necessary to make the important decisions professional nurses are responsible for. Nursing simulation is part of clinical learning and gets you as close as possible to genuine patient-care situations, affording you growth opportunities so you feel prepared to care for patients.
ABSN simulation at CSP Global allow you to:
- Participate in collaborative learning experiences to improve clinical decision-making.
- Practice nursing clinical judgement for a variety of scenarios that increase in complexity.
- Develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills in a controlled environment.
Clinical Learning Experiences
Accelerated BSN clinicals provide opportunities to apply the information you are learning in your online coursework into a variety of environments where professional nurses are employed.
Still, that doesn’t mean you’ll be inserting IVs or evaluating patients’ responses to complex nursing interventions right from the get-go. At first, you’ll perform basic care skills, learn how to assess and communicate with diverse patients and document nursing interventions. Other skills you’ll focus on at the beginning of your nursing clinical experience include safe patient-handling practices and assisting patients with activities of daily living (ADLs).
As the content of your online coursework becomes more complex, so too will your clinical learning experiences. Later in our accelerated BSN, you’ll find yourself taking on additional responsibilities and learning more complex skills. You will also spend time reflecting on your own emerging performance, which is an important part of your growth and development as a professional nurse.
While the length of your Accelerated BSN clinicals will vary, you can expect to gain experience in a variety of modalities and settings, preparing you to provide safe and holistic care as a professional nurse.
Ready to answer the call of nursing? Contact an admissions counselor and find out if you CSP Global’s ABSN program — with locations in St. Paul, MN, and Portland, OR — is right for you.