Comparison of clinical instructors' teaching behaviors as perceived by themselves with those assessed by their students in the clinical setting

ABSTRACT

The clinical education is considered as the heart of the nursing education. It remains the single most important resource in the development of competent, capable, and caring nurses. It prepares the students for their professional role and provides them with opportunity to apply knowledge, skills, and concepts in the clinical settings. Most importantly, clinical instructors' behaviors in the clinical area play an important part in the learning process of the student. There are few studies that determine and evaluate what constitutes effective teaching behaviors of clinical instructors in the clinical area. Hence, the present study aimed at comparing clinical instructors' teaching behaviors as perceived by themselves with those assessed by their students and also using qualitative analysis to determine positive and negative students' comments for clinical instructor behaviors in the clinical setting. The study was conducted at Faculty of Nursing at Mansoura University. Two groups of subjects were included in the present study; clinical instructors group [n=62] and nursing students group [n=120]. Two questionnaire sheets were used for data collection; clinical instructors' questionnaire and student's questionnaire that were developed by researcher based on reviewing literature. The third part of student's questionnaire included open ended questions to establish positive and negative clinical instructors' as perceived by student encountered in clinical training. A major finding of this study was that there was a statistical significance difference between clinical instructors' teaching behaviors as perceived by themselves with those assessed by their students in the clinical setting. At the end of the study, recommendations were given that clinical instructor should offer information and positive feedback in the directions of students, being accessible and also encourage student's creative thinking and freedom in discussion: