The effect of blended clinical teaching on nursing students’ attitude toward psychiatric patients

Introduction: Negative attitudes toward psychiatric patients and mental health nursing have been recognized as a major barrier to sustaining adequate psychiatric nursing workforce. Most previous researches explored the effect of theory and clinical education on students’ attitude. This study aimed at investigating the effect of blended clinical teaching on nursing students’ attitude toward psychiatric patients. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study 85 nursing students (47 in the experiment group, 37 in the control group) were studied and their attitude was measured before and after training.The experiment group attended a blend of clinical learning opportunities (including group therapy and game therapy, patient interview and education sessions) in addition to routine training. Results: Attitudes of the two groups before training were not significantly different (P>0.05). But attitude of the experiment group after training was higher than that of the control group(41.9±5.7, 35.2±3.7 P≤0.01) Conclusion: The findings suggest that blended clinical teaching in mental health education can positively influence attitudes, readiness to practice, and the acceptability of mental health nursing.