Barriers to and Facilitators of Clinical Education from Sanandaj Nursing Students' Viewpoints, 2010-2011

Background and Objectives: Since the barriers to the clinical education can adversely affect nursing profession goals the purpose of this study was to investigate apprenticeship and internship nursing students' views about facilitators of and barriers to the clinical education in Sanandaj School of Nursing and Midwifery. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, viewpoints of all 160 apprenticeship and internship nursing students studying at Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences were investigated. Data were collected using a self-structured questionnaire including demographic characteristic and 64 questions about facilitators and barriers of clinical education in eight domains using five-point Likert scale. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed using content validity based on the expert views and the reliability was investigated using the Cronbach's alpha (0.78). Data were analyzed using the descriptive and inferential statistics with 95% confidence interval in the SPSS. Results: The most cited facilitator of the clinical education from views of the apprenticeship (n=64 57.1%) and internship (n=33 68.8%) students was the relationship between instructors and students. The lack of facilities in hospitals was the most cited barrier of the clinical education from the apprenticeship students viewpoint (n=45 40.2) whereas the attributes of the clinical instructors was the most cited barrier among the internships (n=22 45.8%). There were statistical differences between the apprenticeship and internship students viewpoints on the students' satisfaction from rules and regulations and the teaching methods (P<0.05). Conclusion: Regarding the effectiveness of the clinical education in acquisition of nursing skills, it is necessary to improve clinical education to reduce the existing challenges.