EXPERIENCES OF FIRST-YEAR NURSING STUDENTS AT A PUBLIC NURSING COLLEGE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Transition from secondary to tertiary education presents unique challenges for first-year nursing students. First year nursing students have to adapt to the unique challenges of clinical practice environments, as their education and training incorporates an almost equal amount of time for class attendance and clinical practice placement. The aim of the study was to explore and describe the experiences of first-year nursing students regarding their teaching-learning environment in the comprehensive four-year diploma programme.A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual approach was used. Fourteen second-year students from two Nursing College campuses were purposively selected for the study. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted. Participants were asked to reflect on their experiences of the first year of the nursing programme. Interview sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim by the researcher. The researcher and independent coder later used Tesch’s method of data analysis to analyse and code the transcribed dataThe findings indicated that the majority of their experiences concerning the teaching-learning environment in the first year of study were negative. These negative experiences related to challenges in the classroom and at the clinical practice environments in relation to their nurse educators and clinical staff members; management challenges were related to lack of resources at the campuses and the reportedly poor communication between campus managers and the students. Nurse educators and professional nurses in clinical practice environments should aim at optimising the teaching-learning environment of first-year nursing students in order to improve student retention and graduation thereby increasing the number of professional nurses in the country