Learning Challenges Faced by Nursing Students in a Clinical Learning Environment
Introduction to the Problem
Clinical learning is an excellent part of nursing education. Students should be highly exposed to the clinical learning environment as an essential factor affecting teaching and learning procedures in a healthcare background. Competency among nursing professionals depends on acquired knowledge and skills (Afzal et al. 2019). Nursing education entails a mixture of theoretic and practical learning encounters that enable students’ skills, knowledge, and attitude equipment. Nursing education entails two supplementary parts, including theoretic and practical training. Nurses carry out most of their education in healthcare backgrounds, and in most of the countries, medical education forms a higher percentage of the official nursing education. Thus, medical education is deliberated to be a critical and primary part of the academic nursing program. Because the nursing profession is based on one’s performance, medical learning backgrounds play a crucial role in assisting students in acquiring professional skills and training them to enter the work and be licensed. Further, nursing academic’s medical area is incredibly significant to students during the selection or rejection of nursing as a career.
The complication of learning in the medical background has made scholars assess the pre-existing factors such as the psychosocial environment in medical departments, alleged skills from the learning setting, which can either be good or bad and interpersonal associations. Researches have revealed that most learning settings, regardless of the numerous welfares to nursing students, do not offer a good learning background to students to improve transitions.
Identification of The Problem Facing Nursing Education
According to Amattayakong et al. (2020), nursing is an art that involves providing care. Nursing professionals are extensively involved in training and delivering interventions, and they are also engaged in various other responsibilities. The settings used by learning students to learn clinical practices face numerous factors that can significantly affect learning. Whether as an educator, communicator, advocate, or leader, nurses must have proper knowledge and understanding in practical situations. Nursing education faces challenges such as aligning the education with a clinical environment, technological challenges and challenges in developing faculties.
Aligning Education with the Practice Environment
The global healthcare system is increasingly becoming complex, and potential nurses will face more challenges in their practice settings. The 21st century has experienced many changes because of the system’s identifiable failures, as most of the countries have varied and unrestricted disintegrated funding. Increased technological utilization in healthcare is rapidly expanding. Medical learning institutions, professionals, and students are forced to acquire additional skills to cope with the rapid amount of new information, concepts and skills (Günay & Kılınç, 2018). Effective utilization of technology will improve safe care and require consistent monitoring, synthesis, and management of a higher amount of data for the patients. The demanding responsibility of the potential nurses will need nurses to have a broadened information basis and possess skills to assist in effective service delivery and patient care.
Faculty Development Challenges
Quality education dramatically depends on properly-trained and experienced faculty employees. Faculty progress and faculty opportunities are more significant issues in nursing education. Insufficient ability in nursing learning institutions, increased need to engage in non-academic activities and comparatively low payment are the main contributing factors to the shortage of nurses, and lack of nursing faculty is the leading cause of capacity confines. Nursing educators should be well experienced to help students integrate theoretic skills into practical things by synchronizing theoretic subjects with suitable learning materials and evidence-based academic techniques (Rodríguez-García et al, 2018). The integration should be functional, and all nursing students should be competently equipped based on the demands in the 21st century. Learning institutions require proficient members in nursing education and well-knowledgeable to act in an advanced practice role. Moreover, school deans must applaud these professionals and function to generate systems that celebrate and reward professionalism in nursing academics.
Technological Problems in Nursing Education
Educational technology entails using developed technological models to affluence the academic journey, and historically, this entails incorporating web-based academics in physical sessions and internet-based classes. Internet-based classes entail electronic references like e-books, an assembly of internet-based hospital materials, computers, and internet services in a class and information technology rooms and video conferencing. Nursing educators have various roles, including; using proper technology in education and training nurses to use it in their medical activities (Günay & Kılınç, 2018). Regardless of the transitions occurring in the healthcare sector, nurses are the essential healthcare service providers, more so in nursing. Thus, they should be well-trained in providing care services to patients in both logical and technological care aspects.
Significance of The Problem to Nursing
Most scholars have focused on medical settings. Numerous researches have also been conducted out across the globe. Nevertheless, the majority of them analyzed medical assessment or stressing factors in medical education. Heinonen et al. (2019) conducted a study and revealed that most nursing students are susceptible to the medical background, which minimizes their motivation and contentment with medical education. Further, students begin having anxiety feelings when they lack the necessary knowledge and medical background skills. Heinonen et al. (2019) established that nursing students suffer from subordination challenges when they enter a clinic. After conducting some literature review, only a few research pieces have focused on the problems faced by nursing students in the medical background across the globe. Therefore, these problems are not adequately known. Establishing the issues faced by nursing students in their medical setting can assist in improving training and enhancing the quality of students’ learning and promotion. Also, outlining these problems in this research will help healthcare managers and other nursing professionals understand the challenges to provide a learning environment to new nursing employees. A conducive learning and working environment will help in improving skills among nurses. Nurses will take this problem to improve their conditions.
Purpose of the Research
Nursing students utilize medical backgrounds to further their education. Students socialize in these settings and acquire nursing career skills. The nurse’s essentialness defines the necessary skills and proficient capabilities of students and problems emerging from working with nurses for the students as clients of the training procedure. Therefore, the purpose of this study will be to outline the issues students face in the medical environment. The study outcomes will be essential to improve the academic level and increase student’s contentment during their practical training. The study’s primary purpose will be to determine the learning problems faced by nursing students in medical settings.
Research Questions
- What are the main challenges faced by nursing students in clinical settings?
- What challenges, if any, do nurses experienced with the transition from student to registered nurse?
- What are the challenges and changes affecting the healthcare sector in the 21st century?
- What are the perceived beliefs among newly graduated nursing students?
References
Afzal, N. F. M. H. M., & Gilani, M. A. (2019). Nursing Students Challenges at Educational and Clinical Environment. Nursing, 62.
Amattayakong, C., Klunklin, A., Kunawiktikul, W., Kuntaruksa, K., & Turale, S. (2020). Wellness among nursing students: A qualitative study. Nurse Education in Practice, 102867.
Danaci, E., Ozturk, E. A., Masat, S., Erdogan, T. K., Palazoglu, C. A., & Koc, Z. (2018). Considerations for professionalism of nursing students in clinical practices. New Trends and Issues Proceedings on Advances in Pure and Applied Sciences, (10), 38-54.
Günay, U., & Kılınç, G. (2018). The transfer of theoretical knowledge to clinical practice by nursing students and the difficulties they experience: A qualitative study. Nurse education today, 65, 81-86.
Heinonen, A. T., Kääriäinen, M., Juntunen, J., & Mikkonen, K. (2019). Nursing students’ experiences of nurse teacher mentoring and beneficial digital technologies in a clinical practice setting. Nurse education in practice, 40, 102631.
Rodríguez-García, M., Medina-Moya, J. L., González-Pascual, J. L., & Cardenete-Reyes, C. (2018). Experiential learning in practice: An ethnographic study among nursing students and preceptors. Nurse education in practice, 29, 41-47.