Finding a mentor, a site, and a project in Hawaii

Excelsior's School of Nursing states that it does not provide clinical instruction in its programs. For graduate and RN-to-BS students, that means the mentor, the host site, and the project are yours to find. Faculty approves what you bring; it does not assign it.

Excelsior's graduate tracks are indirect care: Nursing Education, Nursing Informatics, and Nursing Leadership and Administration, plus the RN-to-MS bridges. There is no advanced practice track, so this page covers education, informatics, and leadership work, not bedside hours. A practice experience is not a clinical rotation and it is not direct patient care. Students often say preceptor; Excelsior says mentor.

The hours are manageable around full-time work in Honolulu or a rotating schedule at a neighbor island hospital. The MSN capstone carries 135 practice experience hours. RN-to-BS runs about 90, split across two 45-hour courses. See practice experience hours and the RN-to-BS route.

One clarification: Excelsior's prelicensure Hybrid BSN in St. Petersburg, Florida and its associate degree program work differently, and Excelsior arranges those placements itself.

Three pieces, all yours to source

• A mentor. Master's prepared, with expertise matching your specialization, volunteering the time. You nominate, faculty approves.
• A site. A real agency willing to host you and sign an affiliation agreement with Excelsior.
• A project. Independent work the organization actually wants, scoped to your hours. See capstone project.

A mentor qualifies on two counts: a graduate degree, and genuine expertise in your specialization. Faculty reviews the nominee and approves or declines. Hawaii's nursing community is small and well connected, which cuts both ways. Fewer candidates, but one good introduction travels a long way.

Your own employer is often the shortest path, so long as the project sits outside your paid duties and the mentor is not simply your supervisor signing hours. At Tripler Army Medical Center or another federal facility, start early: federal sites run their own process on their own timeline.

If your island is thin on candidates in your specialization, say Molokai, Lanai, or west Hawaii Island, do not force a poor match. Find a mentor is where that search starts.

Where to start your list

• Education: staff development and clinical education roles at The Queen's Medical Center, Queen's Medical Center West Oahu in Ewa Beach, Hawaii Pacific Health's Straub and Pali Momi in Aiea, Kaiser Permanente's Moanalua Medical Center, and Adventist Health Castle in Kailua. Also nursing faculty at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Hilo, Hawaii Pacific University, Chaminade University of Honolulu, and Kauai Community College.
• Informatics: clinical informatics and analytics teams inside the larger systems, the Hawaii Health Information Exchange, the state designated exchange since 2009, health plans such as HMSA, AlohaCare, and UHA Health Insurance, and data teams at the Department of Health.
• Leadership: nurse managers, directors, and chief nursing officers across those systems, the Public Health Nursing Branch of the Hawaii Department of Health, Hawaii Health Systems Corporation hospitals such as Hilo Medical Center and Kona Community Hospital, Maui Memorial Medical Center in Wailuku, Wilcox Medical Center in Lihue, and Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center.

Indirect care work lends itself to distance. A curriculum revision, a dashboard build, a quality analysis: none of it requires standing in a hallway in Honolulu. Hawaii students do arrange partly remote hours, informatics especially, which can be the difference between finishing on time and sitting out a term.

Whether remote hours count is decided by your faculty and your host site, not by us. Get it written into your learning agreement before you log anything, and assume you still owe some on site time for orientation, meetings, and your final presentation. Inter island travel is the cost nobody budgets here, so if your site is on Oahu and you live on Kauai, price the flights first.

If you have spent a month emailing strangers and nobody has said yes, that is the ordinary result of doing this alone. We run the Hawaii search for you and move the site and the agreement along so faculty has something to approve. We do not guarantee placement or approve anyone on Excelsior's behalf. See how it works and what it costs, or get matched. Term starting within weeks? Need a mentor fast.