Facilitating and Preventing Factors in Learning Clinical Skills from the Viewpoints of the Third Year Students of Fatemeh School of Nursing and Midwifery

Introduction: Investigating the problems and barriers in learning clinical skills has been regarded in so many studies but the factors facilitating this process have not been taken into consideration. This study was performed with the aim to determine the facilitating and preventing factors in learning clinical skills from the viewpoints of third year students of Fatemeh School of Nursing and Midwifery in Shiraz. Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 54 nursing students in their sixth semester were selected through convenience sampling method. A researcher made questionnaire including questions about demogra-phic characteristics and 67 questions about facilitating and preventing factors in learning clinical skills was distributed among the samples. The questions included the areas of the relationships between the student, staff, instructor and the patient student’s satisfaction with the teaching methods of instructors and staff teaching methods of theoretical and practical lessons the facilities provided by the hospital and university and instructors’ characteristics. The data was analyzed by SPSS software through descriptive statistics. Results: The most facilitating factors in learning clinical skills belonged to Instructors’ educational and scientific experiences in developing educational affairs (77.8%), the educational environment provided by the instructors for experiencing clinical skills by students (77.8%), paying attention to the patient’s rights and needs (76%), and instructors' responsibility toward education (76%). The most preventing factors in learning clinical skills were the stress felt in the ward (83.3%), lack of students' support by staff (66.6%), and staff's bad temperedness (64.8%). Conclusion: Students were satisfied with the items in different areas but they were unsatisfied with the relationship between staff and students, and also the way that instructors presented the practical and theoreti-cal lessons. They mentioned these factors as the ones prevented their clinical learning. It is recommended to revise clinical education and take some appropriate action in order to provide a proper clinical education environment.