ABSTRACT
Introduction: Clinical learning environment have an important role in clinical learning of nursing students. Any differences between expected and actual clinical learning environment of nursing student result in reduce the interest of nursing students to clinical environment and decrease their clinical performance. The aim was to comparison the perception of nursing students regarding expected and actual clinical learning environment in medical-surgical wards
Method: This study was a descriptive cross-sectional and conducted in first semester of 2009-2010 educational years. In this study 217 baccalaureate nursing student from Iran nursing and midwifery faculty participated. The researcher appeared in the student's clinical learning placement at last day, and after produce necessary information about purpose of study, both of versions of questionnaire give to students contemporaneously, and collected after completion. For data collection, clinical learning environment inventory was used that contain 42 item in six areas. Data was analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive and inferential statistic
Results: The paired t test showed that there were statistical differences between actual and expected perception on nursing students regarding clinical learning environment
Conclusion: The results of this study showed, nursing students haven't positive perception of the clinical learning environment and their perception of actual clinical learning environment to differ from expected clinical learning environment