Nursing Students’ Expectations of their Clinical Instructors: Practical Implications in Nursing Education

Abstract

Nursing students learn under the responsibility of clinical instructors during their related learning experience (RLE). Generally, nursing students regard their clinical instructors as pivotal sources of foundational knowledge, skills, and values to develop themselves into competent and compassionate nurses.  It is usual for them to leverage their expectations of their clinical instructors. The study aimed to uncover and learn from the nursing students’ expectations of their clinical instructors in terms of inductive codes such as teaching strategies, assessment of student learning outcomes, monitoring and evaluating learning progress, recognizing student efforts, professional mastery, and descriptions of ideal clinical instructors.  This descriptive qualitative study employed thematic analysis to structured interview transcripts from conveniently sampled nursing students in a private university in the Philippines. During their RLE, the nursing students viewed that i.) clinical instructors utilize various teaching strategies; ii.) variety of assessment techniques are used revealing innate teacher values and some students' undesirable feelings towards their clinical instructors; iii.) limited techniques in monitoring and evaluating students' progress are employed; iv.) students have feelings of being denied of recognition; v.) teacher-student likeness, and some unwanted perceptions on professional mastery are essential; and vi.) caring attributes, cognitive, and clinical competence make up the ideal clinical instructors. The quality of nursing students is as good as the quality of their clinical instructors.  Their clinical instructors primarily influence their level of confidence during the RLE.  Findings suggest that clinical instructors need to rethink about their practices in ensuring quality instruction and supervision during RLE.