Specificities and differences in nursing students' perceptions of nursing clinical faculties' competences

Abstract

The impact that clinical faculty have on students is often misunderstood and this research gives us information about how the students' needs and perceptions change over the course of time. The aim of this study is to examine the specificities and differences between expectations and evaluations of clinical faculty's competences done by the first, second and third year undergraduate nursing students (N = 135). The instrument was a modified version of a questionnaire taken from The Nursing Clinical Teacher Effectiveness Inventory (NCTEI). Prior to clinical practice, the students evaluated the desirability of each competency expected from a clinical faculty (Questionnaire 0); after the clinical practice, the students estimated how often their clinical faculty possessed and applied those competencies according to the same items (Questionnaire 1). The first-year students had significantly higher expectations of their clinical faculty, particularly in terms of Teaching Ability (P = .001), while the second-year students had significantly lower expectations, particularly for clinical faculty Personality (P = .001). After the clinical practice, the overall clinical faculty competence evaluations were significantly lower among first-year students (P = .006), while the third- and second-year students' evaluations of the clinical faculty more closely matched their expectations. The quality of clinical practice largely depends on the clinical faculties' competencies.

Keywords: Clinical faculty; Clinical practice; Competence.