Residency & Clinical Hours

Your clinical experiences should be based upon your own career goals, DNP project focus, or related to attaining depth in your clinical specialization. At the beginning of the clinical residency, you will develop objectives in conjunction with your mentor/preceptor and faculty advisor. Throughout the experience, you will complete a log of your clinical experiences detailing the hours, activities, and how you are meeting your objectives.

Clinicals may assume different foci. Some students have used their hours, for example, to focus on specific aspects of their practice, pursue more in depthunderstanding of issues from a policy focus, or complete a post-masters specialization in another field, i.e. acute care pediatric practitioner or gerontology content. Students are encouraged to consider the role and area in which they plan to work following graduation and to take a broad view in structuring the clinical experiences.

Clinical Evaluation

The Catholic University faculty will work closely with the student and the mentor/preceptor to assure that expectations for student learning objectives and course outcomes are clear. Ongoing communication between the faculty and mentor/preceptor is enhanced through email and phone calls. Site visits and virtual meetings can offer additional opportunities for collaboration and assessment of a student’s progress. The use of weekly clinical logs that students submit to faculty for review and critique is a required expectation for each clinical rotation. Mid-term and final student evaluations are completed by the mentor/preceptor and reviewed with faculty. The final grade for a course remains the responsibility of the faculty after consultation with the student, preceptor and careful review of all of the course requirements.