NURS 4450 Public Health Nursing: securing your community site
NURS 4450 is the required course in UCCS's online RN to BSN that carries clinical contact hours, and the site is yours to secure: a community setting you pick, subject to UCCS faculty approval, and never your own unit or an inpatient acute unit. The enrollment checklist closes on October 1 ahead of a spring start, March 1 ahead of summer and May 1 ahead of fall, and no hours begin until a fully executed agreement is in place.
Get your placement plan
Tell us your UCCS program and where you live. A placement advisor replies with the preceptor and site options that fit your UCCS course.
What the course asks of you
In UCCS's own phrase, NURS 4450 is "a contact hour course." The course page says students "will complete contact hours at a community site of their choice, provided it is deemed appropriate by UCCS faculty." The RN-BSN Student Clinical Site Sheet adds the other half of the rule: students are responsible for securing a clinical site, and the hours cannot be done on their unit of employment or on inpatient acute units.
The number of contact hours is not published on any UCCS page checked for this guide. Ask the course faculty for the current figure before you approach a site, so the mentor knows the full commitment. The course comes near the end of the program, and like every RN to BSN nursing course it runs on UCCS's 8-week format.
| UCCS source | Name it uses |
|---|---|
| 2026-27 catalog | Public Health Nursing |
| Undergraduate Nursing Student Handbook 2026-2027 | Community Health Nursing |
| Older college page | NURS 4450: Population Health |
| RN to BSN FAQ | NURS 4450 Community Health (clinical course) |
All four names point to the same 6-credit course, so a site contact who knows it by another name has the right course.
Prerequisites before you apply
For students who started the RN to BSN in or after Fall 2022, the enrollment checklist lists five prerequisites: NURS 3040 Professional Nursing Role Development and Reflective Practice, NURS 3070 Introduction to Informatics, NURS 3080 Quality and Safety, NURS 4015 Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice, and NURS 4350 Nursing Leadership.
An older college page for the course still names earlier prerequisites (NURS 3050 and NURS 4250). If you started before Fall 2022, or if the two lists seem to disagree for you, go by the current checklist and ask your nursing advisor to confirm. Required nursing courses in the RN to BSN need a C (74%) or better, so check that every prerequisite cleared that bar before you count on a start term.
The enrollment checklist, in order
UCCS's NURS 4450 checklist is a sequence, and every item must be complete by the deadline for your start term: spring entry closes October 1, summer entry March 1, fall entry May 1. Miss it and, in the checklist's words, "you will not receive a permission number to register."
- Finish the prerequisitesThe five courses above, completed with passing grades.
- Attestation and intentSign the handbook attestation and file your Intent to Apply.
- Open your mCE accountRegister in myClinicalExchange and upload your compliance documents there. The myClinicalExchange page explains the platform.
- Send the site sheetThe Clinical Site Information Sheet names your community site and your site mentor.
- Background check and drug screenBoth through CastleBranch: the background check under package NV15 and the 10-panel drug screen under NV15dt. Details are on the background check page.
- Badge photoA photo for your UCCS ID badge closes out the list.
The site sheet is part of the checklist, so the site has to be secured before the deadline, not after registration opens.
Choosing a site faculty will approve
The test is whether UCCS faculty consider the setting appropriate for public health nursing. Your own unit is out, inpatient acute units are out, and everything else is judged site by site. A setting whose daily work is aimed at a community or population, rather than at one inpatient bed at a time, fits the course's focus most naturally.
A few Colorado Springs organizations are handled differently. The site sheet names El Paso County Health Department, UCHealth, The Lane Center and Nurse Family Partnership as sites reserved through the course faculty, so a student hoping for one of them goes through faculty rather than calling the organization directly.
Once you are placed, you follow the agency's dress code rather than the UCCS uniform, per the undergraduate handbook. Immunization, CPR and other compliance records go into mCE; the compliance page lists them.
Your site mentor and the person who signs
The site sheet asks for two different people, and it is easy to line up only one. The first is your site mentor, the person at the agency who will guide your hours. The second, in section 4 of the form, is whoever holds the legal authority to sign the clinical education agreement for the organization. The form points out that this is usually someone other than your mentor and tells you to identify them.
That signer matters because the site sheet also states that "No hours can be done without a fully executed agreement in place." In a county health department or a large nonprofit, the signer may sit in an administrative or legal office several steps away from the program you will work in. Naming that person on the sheet, with correct contact details, lets the agreement move instead of stalling in someone's inbox.
Licenses, states and the online question
- RN to BSN students may live in 21 states: the 14 graduate NP states plus seven others, among them Iowa, Kansas, New York and Virginia. The approved states page covers the full rule.
- If you live outside Colorado, hold an active RN license from your home state before the course begins.
- Dual Enrollment students living in Colorado can start
NURS 4450unlicensed; passing the NCLEX and holding a license have to come beforeNURS 4480. - UCCS sources differ on delivery. The catalog carves the Public Health Clinical out of its online-delivery statement; the RN to BSN FAQ, by contrast, says the program is fully online and names
NURS 4450in that. The coursework is online either way; the contact hours happen at your community site.
The RN to BSN program guide covers the rest of the degree, from articulation credits to the capstone.
Why RN to BSN students choose us
Working nurses have little spare time to cold-call agencies before a checklist deadline, and that search is exactly the work we take on. We search for a community or public health setting near where you live that fits the course's population focus and sits outside your own unit. We confirm a site mentor who is willing to host you, and we track down the person with legal authority to sign so section 4 of the site sheet is right the first time.
Everything arrives in a form you can drop straight into the Clinical Site Information Sheet, well before your term's checklist date. UCCS faculty approve the site and the college executes the agreement; we see to it that the packet they receive is complete and fits the rules. Tell us your start term and your county with the form below.
Questions UCCS students ask
How many clinical hours is NURS 4450 at UCCS?
UCCS labels the course a contact hour course, yet the count itself is missing from its public pages, the checklist and the site sheet. The course faculty can give you the current figure. Plan your site conversation around the full course length so the mentor is not surprised midway.
Can my own employer host my NURS 4450 hours?
The RN-BSN site sheet rules out two places: the unit where you are employed and any inpatient acute unit. A community-facing program run by a larger employer is a question for the course faculty, who judge whether each site is appropriate. Raise it before the checklist deadline so there is time to secure a different site if the answer is no.
What happens if I miss the NURS 4450 checklist deadline?
No permission number is issued, and without one you cannot register, so the course shifts to a later term. The three cutoffs are October 1 (spring), March 1 (summer) and May 1 (fall). Because the site sheet is one of the checklist items, the site search really needs to finish a few weeks before the date itself.
Does UCCS arrange NURS 4450 sites for students?
Securing the site is the student's job under the RN-BSN site sheet. The exception is a short list of Colorado Springs organizations, among them UCHealth and the county health department, that are reserved through the course faculty. Everywhere else, you find a community site of your own and faculty decide whether it is appropriate.
Which UCCS semesters can I start NURS 4450 in?
The checklist sets deadlines for spring, summer and fall entry, so all three are possible. UCCS delivers RN to BSN nursing courses in 8-week blocks. The academic calendar page lists this year's semester dates, and your advisor can say which session your section falls in.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-25
We check these pages against UCCS's catalog, practicum handbooks and college pages. Your degree plan, the handbook for your cohort and the Graduate Clinical Practicum Coordinator have the final word.
UCCS asks you to find your clinical hours where you live. Let us run that search.
Tell us your UCCS track, your next clinical course and where you live. We find preceptors who fit the course and prepare the details your Clinical Site Sheet needs, early enough for the agreement to be signed before the semester.
- Preceptors matched to the course: pediatrics for
NURS 6900, acute and chronic care forNURS 6915andNURS 6925, psychiatric prescribers forNURS 6801toNURS 6803 - Credentials, license, certification and the site's signer ready for the Clinical Site Sheet
- In Colorado Springs, along the Front Range, or in any of UCCS's approved states
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