Evaluating clinical competency of nursing instructors of different levels from students’ point of view

Clinical education constitutes a major share of nursing education and clinical competence of instructors is a key factor in offering proper knowledge, skills and attitude to students. The diversity in competence level of instructors and absence of the same educational approaches, have led to a dependence of education on individual abilities of the instructors. As a result, evaluating the clinical competency of the instructors seems to be necessary.

This descriptive study was carried out on 165 nursing and surgical technology students. The tool for data collection was a two-part questionnaire consisting of demographic information and clinical competency attributes, covering five areas including personal characteristics, interpersonal relationships, educational skills, clinical evaluation and management competency. Range of scores was zero to six, and SPSS software was used for data analysis.

The results revealed that the mean age of students was 21 ± 5.9. The mean total score for clinical competencies was (5.1 ± 1.1) for Ph.D. instructors, (4.7 ± 1.1) for PhD students, (4.48 ±1.2) for trainers and (1.3 ± 4.41) for hospital personnel. 64.5% of the students preferred to be taught by a Ph.D. regarding clinical competence, the highest score was for personal characteristics and the lowest score for clinical evaluation and management competency.

According to our findings, Ph.D. faculty members of the nursing school have a better clinical competence compared to other instructors, and increasing clinic-based instructors can improve the quality of clinical education. Moreover, planning for clinical evaluation and developing management.