Background: Collaborations between nursing schools and teaching hospitals are important for achieving the goals of clinical nursing education. While previous work showed that nursing students benefit from academic-practice partnerships, it is unclear how these collaborations help nursing students.
Objective: To identify the role of academic-practice partnerships from the perspective of nursing students. Two hypothetical models based on system theory were proposed that utilized input-transformation-output processes. The input, transformation, and outputs were the "academic-practice partnership", "interaction between nurses and nursing students", and "professional self-concept and organizational socialization of nursing students", respectively.
Design: This study used a cross-sectional research design.
Setting: This study was conducted at a nursing school in Korea.
Participants: The participants included 243 fourth-year nursing students who were about to graduate.
Methods: A questionnaire was used to collect data in August 2019. Path analysis was used to explore the models to determine the roles of academic-practice partnerships.
Results: Two hypothetical models indicated the role of academic-practice partnership. The academic-practice partnership positively affected the interaction between nurses and nursing students, which directly and indirectly benefitted professional self-concept and organizational socialization of nursing students.
Conclusion: The higher perceived academic-practice partnership by nursing students, the better their interactions with nurses, professional self-concept, and organizational socialization. Therefore, nursing students should be aware of the academic-practice partnerships and nursing educators should effectively show these partnerships or collaborations to nursing students. Moreover, nursing educators should also encourage nursing students to interact with their preceptors in their practicums and, as nurses are important educators in academic-practice partnerships, they should be qualified as preceptors to teach nursing students.
Keywords: Academic-practice partnership; Interaction; Nursing education; Students.
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