The effects of clinical supervision program application on nursing

Background. Practice is where skills are developed and where theory must pass testing but there is a gap between classroom education and practice in nursing. The clinical supervision is a demonstration project of advanced practice and bridging the gap between theory and practice. Clinical supervision is a mechanism supporting both professional and personal development. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of clinical supervision on nursing students skills including interpersonal, professional and communication. Methods. This is a quasi-experimental study in which 100 nursing students under clinical training were selected by simple sampling method and were divided into two case and control groups. The data was collected by a questionnaire. For the case group, clinical supervision was applied by a staff member and an instructor for a two week period while that of the control group was a two week nursing practice conducted only by an instructor. Then the students’ viewpoints about interpersonal , professional and communication skills before and after the two week training were compared in both groups. Results. The findings showed that according to the students’ viewpoints the differences between the means of interpersonal, professional and communication skills and total skills in pre- and post-application of clinical supervision were statistically significant in the case group but in the control group they weren’t statistically significant before and after training. Conclusion. The results of this study indicate that designing teaching clinical courses based on clinical supervision model can promote interpersonal, professional and communication skills of the nursing students. Therefore, considering the problem of practice in nursing education and the effectiveness of clinical supervision followed in this study and other studies such as the ones conducted by Severinsson Sloan & Bishop , its vast application in teaching clinical courses in nursing is highly recommended.