Baccalaureate Nursing Students’ Lived Experiences of Theory-Practice Gap (TPG) in a Tertiary Health Institution in Enugu: A Phenomenological Approach

Theory-practice gap is viewed in literature as a general problem ravaging nursing profession developing countries and there with comprehension of the concepts. This study aimed to describe Baccalaureate Nursing Students’ lived experiences TPG during clinical practice tertiary health institution Enugu Nigeria. The researchers sought address three objectives: To assess baccalaureate students’ understanding practice, explore their on areas where exists examine perceptions strategies for closing gap. A qualitative descriptive phenomenological design was adopted 20 students who were at 500 level study. class purposively sampled, while exact number recruited using snowball sampling. semi-structured interview guide instrument data collection. Data collected audio-tape recorder face-to-face in-depth individual interviews, analyzed conventional content analysis. Four broad themes thirteen subthemes emerged from results this study, namely: Understanding (interpreting); Experiencing such procedures (predominantly wound-dressing, vital-signs checking, medication, bed-making, admission discharges, hand-hygiene practices, use nursing-process patients’ care others), educational planning/administration relationship/attitudes, Perceiving response (training retraining, interactive relationship, behavior reformation, resource provision, supervisory roles, system best strategy); Worst responding ( poor provision routinizing wrong practices).