Views and perceptions of nursing students on their clinical learning environment: teaching and learning

Abstract

Introduction: The clinical learning environment constitutes an initial area of professional practice for nurses and student opinion contributes to its improvement.

Purpose: The assessment of students' views and perceptions of a Greek nursing school on their clinical learning environment.

Material and methods: The study was concurrent and included 196 students. We used the published questionnaire "Clinical Learning Environment Inventory (CLEI)" which is a tool for identifying and assessing Nursing students' perceptions of the psychosocial characteristics of their clinical learning environment. The questionnaire was anonymous and completed by the students themselves during their clinical training at the hospital. We conducted inductive and descriptive statistics. The level of statistical significance was set at p<0.05. The statistical program SPSS 16.0 was used.

Results: The highest mean score for the Actual Clinical Learning Environment was observed in the scales of "Personalization" (23.97) and "Task orientation" (23.31) while for the Preferred Clinical Learning Environment in the scales of "Personalization" (27.87), "Satisfaction" (26.82) and "Task orientation" (26.78). The lowest mean score for the Actual Clinical Learning Environment was found in the scales of "Innovation" (19.21) and "Individualization" (19.24) while for the Preferred Clinical Learning Environment in the scales of "Individualization" (22.72) and "Involvement" (24.31). Statistically significant positive correlation was found between "Satisfaction" and all other scales of the CLEI.

Conclusions: There is a noticeable gap between the expectations and reality of the clinical learning environment for the students in nursing. Reorganization of the educational framework is needed with an emphasis on innovation and individualization.

Keywords: CLEI; Clinical learning environment; Nursing education; Practice nursing; Students' satisfaction.