A Study of Senior Nursing Student's Opinions About Clinical Skills Level Acquired During Nursing Training

The quality of health care mainly depends on how nurses work, which is the most important part of hospital services. The practical and clinical nature of nursing necessitates clinical education to be planed in order to provides the chance of observing, imitating, supervising and have a feed back for nursing students. Determining senior nursing student’s opinions about clinical skills level acquisited during their training period, a descriptive study was carried out in which data were collected through a self report questionnaire. The research focused on 251(221 female and 30 male) senior nursing students of Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Universities of Medical Sciences. The results revealed that the skills related to "assessment of vital signs" with the average of (87.5) was acquisited in level of "Experienced" or level (5). Skills related to "drug administration" and "infection control and wound care" with the averages of 77.76, 79.23 respectively were acquisited in level (4) or "Master". Moreover, more than 90% of the study sample had the opportunity to perform mentioned skills more than once. The skills related to "maintaining personal hygiene and movement", "collecting laboratory samples", "providing nutrition needs", "oxygenation and opening airways" and "providing urinary and bowel elimination" with the averages of 57.92, 61.65, 65.29, 65.46, 66.79 respectively were acquisited in level of "Supervised" or level(3). Meanwhile 20% of students never performed such skills the investigators. It is concluded that although the level of "Supervised" is known as an expected level, most clinical skills are gained at this level or higher, but most of the students did not accomplished this level at all. So it is suggested that the expected level has to be well defined and the achievement to this level be provided in training programs. It also would be beneficial if researchers conduct studies on other domain of nursing skill.