Nursing Students’ Perceived Effective Clinical Teachers’ Behaviors

Abstract

Clinical teaching is a core component of nursing education. The clinical teachers’ roles and responsibilities are to supervise clinical activities and empower students to gain clinical competency and skills. The nursing students’ perspective of effective clinical teachers’ behavior is an important indicator of facilitating and improving clinical education quality. This paper explored diploma nursing students’ perceived importance of effective clinical teaching behavior in helping their learning. A total of 165 nursing students from various levels of their diploma in nursing program from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) were invited to participate. A self-administered questionnaire was employed to collect demographic data and students perceptions of effective clinical teacher behaviors and their importance on learning outcomes using the Nursing Clinical Teaching Effectiveness Inventory (NCTEI). The study results indicated that nursing students perceived evaluation as the most important effective clinical teaching behavior, while personal characteristics are the least important effective clinical teaching behavior. The results showed a significant positive relationship between the frequency of effective clinical teaching behavior used and the level of importance of effective clinical teaching behavior for all five criteria. This information can be used to improve faculty awareness of students’ views on clinical teaching performance and as a guide for the clinical instructor to develop and revise the clinical teaching approach in the clinical setting. Behavior perceived to be effective should be incorporated into clinical instructor practice, thereby maximizing students learning experiences in the clinical setting.