BSN clinicals at Ball State: placed by the School, supervised by faculty

The School of Nursing arranges BSN clinicals

This is the clearest difference between Ball State's BSN and its online graduate programs. For pre-licensure students, the School of Nursing arranges clinical placements. Ball State's bachelor's page points to its strong relationships with clinical agencies across east-central Indiana, and says students take the skills they learn in the laboratory into real clinical settings under the supervision of nursing faculty.

Indiana's rules for pre-licensure programs work the same way. The Indiana State Board of Nursing's rules call for written agreements between a program and every agency it uses for clinical experiences, and they make nursing faculty responsible for assigning, guiding, evaluating and supervising students' clinical learning. When a pre-licensure program uses clinical preceptors, the current rule text asks for RN preceptors with at least three years of experience and a designated faculty member responsible for each student's learning. The Indiana Board of Nursing rules guide covers them in more depth.

In practice that means you receive your clinical assignments rather than build them. The School's baccalaureate staff, including the Baccalaureate Program Coordinator and the baccalaureate programs directors, are the people to ask when a question about a placement comes up.

Five clinical semesters, in order

The clinical courses come in a fixed sequence, paired by semester. The table follows the Regular plan in the Baccalaureate Program Handbook; accelerated students take the same pairings as five back-to-back terms.

Ball State does not publish clinical hours for individual BSN courses. It describes NUR 330 as spanning hospital and community settings, and NUR 430 as critical care in which, as Ball State's bachelor's page puts it, you work directly with a nurse in various areas of practice. NUR 423, the transition-to-practice seminar, prepares you for the NCLEX.

Clearance before your first clinical

A placement only goes ahead once you are cleared. The baccalaureate handbook's requirements include a physical exam and an N95 form, and the undergraduate catalog requires criminal background checks and Medicare/Medicaid exclusion screenings at admission and every year after.

The drug screen deserves particular care. The baccalaureate handbook warns that a positive result may affect your ability to be approved for required clinical placement assignments, so read the School's drug screening policy in full, including anything it says about CBD products, before you test.

Clinical paperwork runs through CORE-ELMS, which the baccalaureate handbook names along with its Electronic Forms and Document Library features. Each baccalaureate student in a clinical is also covered by Ball State University's professional liability insurance policy. Graduate students use a different set of rules, set out in the clinical compliance requirements guide, which is worth a look if you plan to continue at Ball State.

Thinking ahead to graduate school

Most of our work is with Ball State's graduate students, and for a BSN student our role is a modest one: helping you see what comes later. If you plan to return for a nurse practitioner degree, the placement model changes completely. Ball State's online FNP students find their own preceptors in their community, start planning about a year ahead, have each agency sign an affiliation agreement, and may be asked for proof of 500 hours of RN work before any graduate clinical course. Graduate students must also live in, and train in, a state where the program is authorized.

The best preparation now is a strong start as an RN and good working relationships with the nurse practitioners you meet along the way. When you reach the graduate stage, we take on the preceptor search, matched to the exact Ball State course. The MS in Nursing FNP guide and how it works explain that path, and the request form is there when your first graduate clinical comes into view.