BSN community field experience placement in Georgia

It is worth sorting out who actually needs a preceptor, because that decides whether you need us. Prelicensure programs almost always arrange clinical rotations for their students. RN-to-BSN programs almost always ask you to find your own community field experience.

• RN-to-BSN students, already licensed and often working, who self-source a community or population-health field experience and a preceptor to sign the hours.
• The smaller number of accelerated or hybrid prelicensure students asked to help find a local site.

We work mainly with the first group. Tell us your program and we will say whether a placement is even required, and our RN-to-BSN field experience page covers how it runs.

A BSN community field experience is built around population health rather than acute bedside care, so the settings are public-health and community organizations.

• The Georgia Department of Public Health works through eighteen public-health districts and a county health department in all 159 counties, which run immunization, communicable-disease, and women's and children's health programs.
• Community health centers and safety-net clinics that serve underserved communities statewide.
• School and college health, occupational and employee-health programs, and home health and hospice agencies.
• Care-coordination and population-health teams inside the state's hospital systems and nonprofits.

That district-and-county structure means most Georgia students have a public-health office within reach, even well outside the metro.

Georgia's sites are not spread evenly, and the rural share of the state is large, so knowing the map early helps.

• Metro Atlanta holds the deepest bench of community clinics, population-health teams, and public-health offices, with strong secondary hubs in Augusta, Savannah, Columbus, Macon, and Athens.
• A large majority of Georgia's counties are rural, where county health departments, home health, and maternal and child programs carry much of the community-nursing work.
• In the rural south, where health resources are thinner, a well-placed county health department or community program can make an excellent field experience.

When your county is short on a given setting, we look to the district office or a neighboring county before the term slips.

Your Georgia preceptor does not have to be a physician or a graduate-level specialist. For a community or population-health experience the right person is usually an experienced nurse or an appropriate professional in the setting.

• An experienced BSN-prepared registered nurse, such as a public-health nurse or a nurse inside a community program.
• A community-program supervisor, a school or occupational-health nurse, or a nurse in a population-health role.

Your program has the final say on who qualifies and how hours are recorded, so we match the fit to your school's rules before anyone commits.

Most RN-to-BSN students are already licensed and working, so licensure comes first. Georgia joined the enhanced Nurse Licensure Compact in early 2018, so a multistate license carries across compact lines.

• If Georgia is your primary state of residence, a Georgia multistate license covers you here and in other compact states.
• If you live in another compact state but complete your field experience in Georgia, your home multistate license generally travels with you, subject to your program's and site's paperwork.

Georgia licenses nurses through the Georgia Board of Nursing, under the Secretary of State, and compact rules change, so confirm your own status there.

There is no national required clinical-hour number for the BSN. The 2021 education standards are competency-based, and each program sets its own community field-experience total, commonly in the rough range of 30 to 120 hours. Confirm your figure with your program and see our BSN clinical hours guide.

• Tell us your program, your required hours, and your county, and we scope realistic public-health and community sites.
• We approach a preceptor, confirm the role and license fit, and hand your program a packet to approve.
• Nothing is billed until a match is confirmed and your school signs off. See how it works and cost.

When you are ready, request a preceptor at the match form and we reply within one business day. We assist with sourcing and coordination, and we never guarantee placement or your program's approval.