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 hospitals in the region. USD partners with large urban hospitals as well as rural hospitals which allows our graduates to care for a variety of patients and populations and to improve healthcare outcomes. You'll experience a different nursing rotation each semester, working alongside hospital staff who will guide you through your clinical.
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. Working together with students from the physical therapy, physician assistant and occupational therapy programs, students will provide services ranging from health screens to neuro-musculoskeletal exams. You'll also experience and learn about the culture in Guatemala while gaining a unique perspective on providing health care services.
Additional service-learning experiences, such as assisting a children's program by training staff and families, 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.