The USD Department of Nursing provides students with many opportunities to gain hands-on experiences and serve others on a local and global level.
Clinical Experiences
As a nursing major, you will gain hands-on experience at a variety of health care facilities in the region. USD partners with both urban and rural hospitals which allows our students to care for diverse patients and populations and improve health care outcomes.
Service Learning
Service-learning experiences complement the nursing curriculum by providing you with hands-on experience helping others outside traditional health care settings.
USD nursing students have the opportunity to travel to Guatemala to provide health care services to people with limited access to quality healthcare. Students have the opportunity to collaborate with interprofessional teams while providing healthcare to the Guatemala population. You will also experience and learn about the culture in Guatemala and gain a unique perspective on providing health care services.
Additional service-learning experiences are also available.
Simulations
Simulation labs are a key part of your education. Simulation sessions allow you to work on unfolding cases in which a patient's condition changes and progresses over time. Each of our sites uses cutting-edge technology to create innovative and realistic patient care scenarios with human simulators that are programmed to demonstrate clinical conditions like asthma, cancer or even traumatic injuries. You will play an active role in determining how to best care for newborn, children and adult models, seeing first-hand how to demonstrate critical thinking when making decisions in response to a patient's needs.