Editing Herzing Issues: Clinical Placement (section)

=== HU-190: For the Fall 2026 family nursing clinical rotation, a Herzing clinical coordinator directed a student to secure her own placement through her employer rather than through the program, and the student reported that placement communication had been thin and asked the program to secure a compliant placement ===
{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%"
! style="width:12em" | Severity
| High
! style="width:12em" | Status
| POSSIBLE. This is a third party report concerning another student, drawn from screenshots rather than from the underlying email records. The content of the two quoted messages is legible and is treated as reliably captured, but the dates, the full recipient list, whether the program subsequently secured a placement, and Student A's authorization for this matter to be documented in this tracker have not been confirmed
|-
! Issue type
| Placement Responsibility Shifted to Student; Employer Based Placement Proposed in Lieu of Program Secured Placement; Placement Communication Gap
! Date added
| 2026-08-05
|-
! Owner
| colspan="3" | Starr Williams-Headen (Clinical Coordinator) / Dr. Raywattie Prashad (Program Chair) / Dr. Rachel Powell (Director of Clinical Placement and Compliance)
|}
'''Finding.''' According to the tracker, this is a third party report concerning Student A, drawn from screenshots rather than from the underlying email records. In an email thread titled "Fall 2026 Clinical Schedule and Planning," Starr Williams-Headen wrote to Student A that at this point in her program she is able to work directly with a preceptor to complete her clinical hours, asked whether she would be interested in doing that with her current employer if possible, and offered that if so, Student A should provide her employer information so that Herzing could assist in pursuing a clinical rotation with them. Student A replied declining the employer based route for two stated reasons. First, she stated that her role is in acute geriatric home based urgent response care, so the setting is limited to older adults and would not provide the lifespan and population breadth that the family nursing clinical requires. Second, she stated that an employer based placement only works if coordination between the program and the site is timely and reliable, that communication on placement had been thin on her end, and that she was not comfortable putting her working relationship with her employer on the line for an arrangement she could not count on to run smoothly. She closed by stating she was counting on the program to secure a placement meeting the course requirements, and asked for the expected timeline and what the program needed from her to keep it moving. The exchange documents an instance in which the institution proposed that the student source her own clinical placement through her employer, and in which the student identified both a curricular mismatch and a program communication reliability concern as reasons that route was not viable. It also documents that, as of her reply, the student did not have a confirmed program secured placement for the Fall 2026 family nursing rotation. The content of the two quoted messages is legible and is treated as reliably captured, but the dates, the full recipient list, whether the program subsequently secured a placement, and Student A's authorization for this matter to be documented in this tracker have not been confirmed.

'''Evidence.''' Screenshot one: Starr Williams-Headen to Student A, subject "Fall 2026 Clinical Schedule and Planning," timestamped 1:59 PM, stating that at this point in her program the student is able to work directly with a preceptor to complete her clinical hours, asking whether she would be interested in doing so with her current employer, and requesting employer information so Herzing could assist in pursuing a rotation. Screenshot two: Student A's reply in the same thread, stating that her acute geriatric home based urgent response role would not provide the lifespan and population breadth the family nursing clinical requires, that placement communication had been thin on her end, that she was unwilling to risk her employment relationship on an arrangement she could not rely on, that she was counting on the program to secure a compliant placement, and asking for the expected timeline and what the program needed from her. Student: Student A is the reporting student and the subject of this entry. The reporting student is the documenting student who provided the screenshots to this tracker; he is not a party to the exchange. Source Group: Two screenshots of an Outlook email thread titled Fall 2026 Clinical Schedule and Planning, provided by the reporting student. First screenshot: message from Starr Williams-Headen to Student A, copied to recipients shown only as Ferra, Jessica, Hill, and Jeff, timestamped 1:59 PM, date not visible in the capture. Second screenshot: Student A's reply to Starr Williams-Headen, date and time not visible in the capture beyond a device clock reading 6:01. Neither screenshot shows the full recipient list, message dates, or any subsequent reply.

'''Reported statement.'''
<blockquote>[Starr Williams-Headen:] At this point in your program, you are able to work directly with a preceptor to complete your clinical hours. Would this be something you would be interested in doing with your current employer if possible?</blockquote>
Student A, a student pseudonym, replied that her acute geriatric home based urgent response role would not provide the lifespan and population breadth the family nursing clinical requires, that communication on placement had been thin on her end, that she was not comfortable putting her employer relationship at risk for an arrangement she could not count on, and that she was counting on the program to secure a compliant placement.

'''Standards.''' Compare against the Herzing University catalog, catoid 80, and the Prelicensure Student Handbook provisions describing how clinical placements are arranged, and against any representations made to students at enrollment regarding whether the institution secures clinical placements. HLC Criterion 3.D (student support) and 34 CFR 668.14 (administrative capability) are potentially relevant if required clinical experiences are in practice sourced by students rather than by the institution. Programmatic nursing accreditation standards regarding adequacy of clinical learning resources and clinical site sufficiency are also potentially engaged; the applicable standard number should be confirmed against the current standards of the accreditor for this specific program before being cited in any filing. This entry is logged as a discrepancy and a pattern data point, not as an asserted finding that Herzing failed to meet any standard, and it does not establish that a placement was ultimately unavailable.

'''Impact.''' If required clinical placements are in practice sourced through students' own employers, students without a clinically suitable employer, or whose employer setting does not match the course population requirements, face a barrier to progression that is unrelated to academic performance. Student A additionally identified a reliability concern about program to site coordination that made her unwilling to expose her employment relationship to the arrangement. The entry also documents a student who, at the time of writing, lacked a confirmed placement for a Fall 2026 required rotation.

'''Notes.''' The screenshots do not show message dates, the full recipient list, or any subsequent reply, so the timeline and outcome are unestablished. Recommend obtaining the underlying email records with headers if this entry is to be relied upon in any filing. Because this concerns another student's individual circumstances, confirm that Student A is aware her correspondence is being documented in this tracker and consents to its use in any external filing, and consider whether her name should be redacted in filings where her individual situation is offered only as pattern evidence. This entry is most useful as corroboration that the student sourced placement pattern previously documented for graduate NP students also appears in the Fall 2026 family nursing rotation, which strengthens it as systemic rather than program specific evidence for an accreditor complaint. Cross-reference: the existing {{HU|HU-081}} cluster documenting the Clinical Placement Pledge and reports that students across multiple states are responsible for sourcing their own preceptors; the existing {{HU|HU-133}} cluster documenting Student A's incorrect Group K rotation assignment and the related communication failures involving Starr Williams-Headen; the existing {{HU|HU-144}} entry documenting the Group K rotation hours reduction reported by Student A and Student Q; the earlier entry recording Student H's account that family nursing OB and pediatrics hours were student sourced and observation only.

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