Factors influencing clinical learning environment among nursing students: A cross sectional study

Clinical learning is the essence of nursing education. Many factors have been demonstrated to influence students’ development of clinical competence. A non-experimental descriptive study was conducted aiming to assess the factors influencing clinical learning environment, to prioritize those factors and to compare with degree and diploma nursing. The study was conducted among student nurses in a selected nursing college in Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala. 100 student nurses including fifty B. Sc. nursing and fifty General nursing students were recruited using stratified and simple random sampling technique after obtaining institutional ethical committee clearance. data was collected from samples after getting informed consent; the tools used were: Section A-Performa to collect demographic characteristics of subjects and Section B-Assessment of factors influencing CLE which was a three point likert scale and it included factors like; Supervision-10 items, Clinical facilities-5 items, Organization-5 items, Inter personal relationship-5 items and Student related factors-5 items. descriptive statistical measures such as frequency, percentage and mean were used for analyze data. The collected data was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences version 20. The mean score of distribution of factors affecting CLE was found as supervision (24.59), clinical facilities (10.74), organization (10.60), IPR (11.68) and student related factors (11.33). On prioritizing the factors highest mean percentage was obtained for supervision (81.97) and the lowest for organization (70.67).