ABSTRACT
Introduction: Although nursing students spend a large part of their learning period in the clinical environment, clinical learning has not been perceived by its nature yet. To develop an instrument to measure effective factors on clinical learning in nursing students
Methods: This is a mixed methods study performed in 2 steps. First, the researchers defined "clinical learning" in nursing students through qualitative content analysis and designed items of the questionnaire based on semi-structured individual interviews with nursing students. Then, as the second step, psychometric properties of the questionnaire were evaluated using the face validity, content validity, construct validity, and internal consistency evaluated on 227 students from fourth or higher semesters. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed, and then, they were analyzed using Max Qualitative Data Analysis and all of qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS 14
Results: To do the study, we constructed the preliminary questionnaire containing 102 expressions. After determination of face and content validities by qualitative and quantitative approaches, the expressions of the questionnaire were reduced to 45. To determine the construct validity, exploratory factor analysis was applied. The results indicated that the maximum variance percentage [40.55%] was defined by the first 3 factors while the rest of the total variance percentage [59.45%] was determined by the other 42 factors. Results of exploratory factor analysis of this questionnaire indicated the presence of 3 instructor-staff, students, and educational related factors. Finally, 41 expressions were kept in 3 factor groups. The alpha-Cronbach coefficient [0.93] confirmed the high internal consistency of the questionnaire
Conclusion: Results indicated that the prepared questionnaire was an efficient instrument in the study of the effective factors on clinical learning as viewed by nursing students since it involves 41 expressions and properties such as instrument design based on perception and experiences of the nursing students about effective factors on clinical learning, definition of facilitator and preventive factors of the clinical learning, simple scoring, suitable validity and reliability, and applicability in different occasions
ABSTRACT
After two decades of expansion of medical universities and increasing the number of students as one of the most attainable solutions for the problem of substandard status of Iranian community health, recently, quality-based policies in medical education have taken priority over most of the national health plans. In this study, we stratified educational services of schools providing a two-year degree course in health sciences in Iran to determine their differences. To measure the educational performance of the course nationwide, a benchmarking tool, consisting of 47 indicators, was devised. Their weights were defined through consensus developing methods. Each school was asked to introduce a representative who would complete a questionnaire, which was designed to collect schools- information. In the next step, all the divisions were visited by one of the project's members and the school-s representative. Then, data retrieval was performed and verified at the project-s office. Schools providing the course were stratified based on their individual scores. Furthermore, all schools were also ranked in each indicator. Among schools providing the course School of Health Sciences of Iran University of Medical Sciences gained the first rank, with the score of 86.53 out of 100. This study defines the educational strengths and weaknesses of health sciences programs in Iran that could be used as a measure for authorities to devise practical strategies for qualitative and quantitative improvement