Clinical education problems: the viewpoints of nursing and midwifery students in Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences

Clinical education is a complicated process which may be affected by different factors and variables. Therefore, recognizing the current situation and problems is the first step to minimize these factors. The aim of this study was to determine the viewpoints of nursing and midwifery students in Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences about problems that they have encountered in clinical education. In this cross-sectional study, 59 bachelor nursing and midwifery students who were in their last semester were involved. The data were collected using a questionnaire with three parts: demographic data; clinical education problems (measured by Likert scale); and one open question related to clinical education problems. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS (ver. 13) software. The most important problems in clinical education were lack of welfare facilities (71.2%), lack of proper clinical environments (39%), lack of educational aids (37.3%), lack of facilities in clinical environments (35.6%) and lack of skilled clinical trainers (35.6%). According to our findings, it is recommended to provide enough facilities and equipments for students in clinical environments and also to employ expert clinical trainers to improve quality of education.