Clinical Practice (Internships)

As a nursing student at SPU, you’ll spend 690 hours in hands-on clinical practice at a broad range of venues throughout the metropolitan Seattle area. You’ll take what you are learning in the classroom to local hospitals and health care agencies, where you’ll work directly with clients. You’ll experience a full array of settings, including hospitals, homeless shelters, public schools, and psychiatric facilities. You will also get hands-on practice in the School of Health Science’s Clinical Learning Lab. Together, these opportunities allow you to blend theory with practice.

Nursing Skills Lab

Clinical Rotations

SPU’s nursing program is intensively hands-on. As a student, you’ll begin clinical practice during your first quarter of the nursing program and continue every quarter until you graduate. As you progress through the clinical experiences in the program, you will continue to develop your nursing practice and technical skills; learning to teach, delegate, and collaborate with other health care team members.

Clinical rotations are varied and provide you with a wide array of experiences. Located just minutes from downtown Seattle, SPU maintains valuable partnerships to facilitate your learning within hospitals, schools, clinics, community agencies, and professional organizations throughout the city. In fact, we have working relationships with more than 150 practice partners.

Partners include:

  • Angeline’s Day Center
  • EvergreenHealth Medical Center
  • Harborview Medical Center
  • Mary’s Place
  • Navos Mental Health and Wellness Center
  • Northwest Hospital & Medical Center
  • Seattle Children’s Hospital
  • Seattle/King County Health Department
  • Seattle Public Schools
  • Seattle Veterans Hospital
  • Swedish Medical Center
  • UW Medical Center
  • Valley Medical Center
  • Virginia Mason Hospital & Medical Center

COVID-19 Best Practices

While SPU does grant medical and religious medical exemptions for the general population of students, the nursing program does require the most recent COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.