Student Internships & Intern Insurance

Throughout this webpage, ‘internship’ refers to a learning experience in which a  student works in an outside setting (e.g. local business, hospital, clinic, school, etc.) as part of their academic program. An internship may also be referred to as a ‘clinical’, ‘practicum’, or ‘field study’.

No matter what the experience is called, the qualifying factors are that a student is:

1. enrolled in an EWU academic program that includes the ‘internship’ as part of the requirements to complete the program,
2. present in a working environment, and,
3. participating in this internship with the knowledge, consent and approval of the EWU faculty/department.

Intern Insurance – Professional Liability and Medical Malpractice

EWU students who are participating in an internship, practicum, clinical, field study, or similar activity may be required to have Professional Liability insurance.  This insurance helps protect students against liability claims that may arise out of their internship activities.

Notes about Internship Insurance:

• To be covered by this insurance, being registered in a course is not always required. In the strictest terms, any student who is doing an internship as part of their academic program (and approved by EWU faculty) is an EWU intern and is covered by the insurance. Their specific course enrollment status at the time is incidental.
• If a student is performing services and those hours count toward their academic requirements, then the student is performing services within their academic program. It does not matter if the student is performing those services during an academic break, so long as the services/hours will count toward their academic requirements and so long as the faculty/department concur.
• Conversely, any activities a student may be doing that are not part of their actual academic program requirements are not covered by EWU insurance (e.g. a student who wants to volunteer to get additional experience at their internship site).