Evaluating the Viewpoints of Nursing and Midwifery Students about Their Clinical Educational Status

Evaluation of student's viewpoints in order to improve and maintain continuous promotion of clinical education quality can lead to recognition and reinforcement of strong points and elimination of weak points of an educational system. The current study was carried out to evaluate the viewpoints of nursing and midwifery students about clinical education in Ilam University of Medical Sciences.

Tthrough a descriptive cross-sectional study using simple random sampling,90 nursing and midwifery students were studied; they had all at least passed one clerckship course in educational hospitals. Data was collected using a standard questionnaire. Data analysis was carried out through student’s t-test applying SPSS Ver.16.

From the viewpoints of the students, the affecting factors on clinical education are educator's characteristics (85.2%), educator's conduct (63.3%), supervision and evaluating components (61.5%, educational objectives and courses (52.2%, and clinical environment (42%) were the most important factors, respectively. T-test showed a significant difference between viewpoints of nursing and midwifery students on supervision and evaluating components(P<0.004).

Findings indicate that current nursing clinical educational status trends need to move toward providing more facilities and revising clinical evaluation methods. Also promoting clinical educato's teaching abilities can lead to improvement of clinical educational status.