The Characteristics of Effective Clinical Teachers as Perceived by Nursing Faculty and Students

ِIntroduction. Since the major part of professional nursing education takes place in clinics, clinical teaching is considered one of the most important parts of nursing education process. Accordingly, clinical teaching effectiveness and the characteristics of an effective teaching have overshadowed a good number of nursing and midwifery research studies. This study was performed to determine and compare the teachers' and students' perspectives regarding the characteristics of effective clinical teachers in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in the year 2002. Methods. In a triangulation study using both qualitative and quantitative methods, 93 teachers and 475 students in the school of nursing and midwifery were investigated. During the first stage, the Delphi method was used and the teachers and students were interviewed regarding the characteristics of effective clinical teacher. Then a 56- item questionnaire was designed with the five domain of "professional", ''personal", ''communicative", ''teaching methods" and "evaluation" using 1 to 7 Likert scale. In the second stage, through survey method and using the designed questionnaire, the students and teachers' perspectives were determined. The data were analyzed by SPSS software using mean, standard deviation and t-test. Results. The mean of Students' and teachers' scores for effective clinical teachers characteristics were 6.15±0.98 and 6.19 ± 0.48, respectively which showed a statistically significant difference between them. Based on the viewpoints of students and teachers, the most important characteristic of effective clinical teachers was responsibility for one's own action and the lowest score belonged to educating clinical ward's staff. Conclusion. All the characteristics mentioned in the questionnaire were approved by the teachers and students. Moreover, the mean of the scores given by teachers was higher than the one given by the students. It is recommended that teacher evaluation be performed using these characteristics and teachers pay more attention to them.