Nursing Students` Viewpoints on Challenges of Student Assessment in Clinical Settings: A Qualitative Study

Introduction: Student assessment in clinical settings is an important subject in nursing education. Reviewing students’ clinical skills, some problems put forward which manifest in students` complaints and frequent meetings between them and their instructors to discuss these problems. Despite some efforts in this area, it is still a major challenge for nursing students. In this regard, nursing students as evaluatees are important sources to identify these challenges. The aim of this study is to determine nursing students` viewpoints toward their clinical evaluation challenges. Methods: This is a descriptive qualitative study performed in year 2010 on a population of students of 4th to 8th semesters who were selected from three major Medical Universities in Tehran. Purposeful sampling method was used for the study and focus group sessions were held for data gathering which was continued to the point of data saturation. Totally 40 students participated in 6 focus group discussions. Data was analyzed using latent content analysis. Results: During analysis 4 themes and 10 subthemes were emerged including evaluation performers` issues (instructor’s professional characteristics, self evaluation, and clinic-education relationship), evaluation requisites (instrument’s efficiency, practical evaluation), evaluation process (goal-oriented evaluation, clarity of evaluation method, evaluation time and type), and emotional environment in evaluation (relationships, self esteem). Conclusion: The results showed numerous challenges which nursing students are confronted while being evaluated clinically. Individuals who play role in evaluation, employed strategies, the evaluation process, and the psychological atmospehere of evaluation were issues emphasized by students as the factors affecting clinical evaluation. It seems that process of assessing nursing students to assure their achievement of clinical learning objectives needs an overall revision. This would facilitate the accomplishment of students into efficiency, skillfulness, and certainty in providing health care for patients.