Students’ perception of effective clinical teaching and teacher behaviour

Learning in the clinical environment is an integral part of nursing education programme. In tertiarybased nursing courses, students spend time learning in the clinical setting as they do in their classroombased studies. The purpose of this study was to explore teaching skills considered by undergraduate student nurses as effective in the clinical setting as well as qualities that make a clinical teacher effective. A descriptive design was employed using questionnaires to collect data. Respondents comprised year four undergraduate student nurses admitted through direct entry (DE) and university matriculation examination (UME) results. Using validated structured questionnaire, data were collected from 101 students who had completed their six months consolidated clinical experience on their perception of teaching skills and teacher qualities considered effective in the clinical setting. Data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Specifically, frequencies, percentage and standard deviation were used for descriptive analysis of scores while chi square and Mann-Whitney tests were used to test the mean differences in the teaching skills and to test whether there was a significant difference in their perception of teacher behaviours respectively at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that having both clinical (professional) and teaching knowledge were the most important teaching skills for effective clinical teaching. Five qualities ranked by students as teacher behaviours important for effective teaching include being honest with students, motivation to teach, willingness to listen and using good communication skills, supervising students effectively and being positive role model. These factors could be considered when recruiting future clinical teachers and when planning in-service education programmes for clinical teachers to promote student learning.