The Effect of Using a Log Book on Nursing Students’ Clinical Competence in Intensive Care Unit

Clinical education is a complex process in which various factors are involved. Clinical competence assessment in nursing profession is very important and one of important issues in clinical education is the improvement of its quality which requires continuous evaluation. Log book is considered as one of the most effective clinical evaluation methods. The present study was conducted to determine the effect of using a clinical log booklet (logbook) on the clinical competence of nursing students in the intensive care unit of Shahrood University of Medical Sciences.

This quasi-experimental study was carried out on 63 junior Trainee and intern nursing students in intensive care unit of Imam Hossein and Bahar hospitals in Shahrood (North East of IRAN). Students were divided into two groups in a nonrandom way: control (conventional training) and intervention group (logbook based training). To assess the clinical competence of the students, Nobakht et al (2016)’s questionnaire, “Nursing Students’ Clinical Competency Examination in ICU” was used. Data were analyzed by SPSS 22 software, Chi-square, independent and paired t-test, and Mann-Whitney test.

The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference in demographic information such as age, sex, marital status and occupation, clinical experience and general mean scores of previous semesters between the two groups of control and intervention (P>0/05). The mean and standard deviation of the total score of the first day of training or internship in control group were 99.19 ± 57.15 and in the intervention group were 92.10 ± 22.88, and on the last day of training or internship in the control group were 126.01±16.33 and in the intervention group were 132/81±18/74 with a good level of competence. The results indicated that in each group the scores were increased, but this increase was higher in the intervention group than control group (P=0/037).

The findings of this study showed that the use of clinical Log booklet increases the clinical competence of nursing students. Hence, it is recommended that professors use this tool for training and internship courses.