Issues in Clinical Learning Environment among Undergraduate Nursing Students in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Background: Nursing students apply theoretical and evidence-based knowledge on real patients in clinical placements, thus poor clinical education may affect their performance along with patient care. The perceptions of nursing internees may serve as a solid evidence of issues in clinical learning. The objective of this study was to identify issues regarding clinical learning among undergraduate nursing students. Material and Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional design was employed to collect data from a sample of 72 graduated Nursing Internees from Nursing Colleges in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province of Pakistan. This study was conducted from April 2019 to August 2019. A Questionnaire in the form of Likert scale was developed for data collection regarding past experiences of their undergraduate studies. SPSS 22 was used for analysis. Chi-squared test was used to compare between male/female, public/private clinical placements and public/private colleges, respectively.    Results: Of the participants 79% (n=57) were male and 21% (n=15) were female. Mean age of participants was 24.29±1.72 years. Four barriers in clinical education due to deficiencies in educational institutions included: shortage of clinical teachers (76.4%), clinical teachers rarely visited students (75%), too many students were supervised by a single teacher (81.9%) and students are overloaded with too many written assignments (75%). The P-value for shortage of clinical teachers was statistically significant (P=.016). The main barriers in clinical education attributed to clinical settings or the hospitals were behavior of the hospital staff resulting in the loss of students’ confidence (73.6%) and anxiety of students to perform wrong procedures (73.6%).  However, none of these barriers in clinical education were statistically significant (P>0.05). Conclusion: Findings of the study illustrated dissatisfaction of graduate nursing internees regarding the clinical education as almost all the issues received more than 50% responses. Key words: Clinical placement, Clinical Nursing teacher, Nursing internees, Student nurse