Iranian Nursing Students' Experiences and Viewpoints of Clinical Evaluation: a qualitative study

Nursing students' clinical evaluation is an important subject in nursing clinical education. Some studies mentioned issues in nursing students` clinical evaluation that manifest in students` complaints and frequent meetings between students and instructors to discuss some problems in this area. Despite some efforts, this subject is still a major challenge for all people involved. So we need to know much more about it, especially from the view of nursing students because they are the one who are evaluated and are at the center of the experience. The aim of this study is determining nursing students` experiences and perspective about their clinical evaluation. This is a descriptive qualitative study. Participants were selected in nursing and midwifery schools of 3 medical Universities, involving baccalaureate nursing students in 3rd and 4th year of nursing education. Sampling method was purposive and was continued to the point of data saturation. Totally 40 students participated in 6 focus groups. Content analysis was applied to analyze the data. During analysis 4 themes and 10 subthemes were emerged including evaluators` issues (professional characteristics of educator, self-evaluation, clinical nurses), evaluation necessities (tool proficiency, practical evaluation), evaluation process (goal-oriented evaluation, evaluation time and type) and emotional environment of evaluation (relationship, confidence). Results showed many challenges nursing students confronted in clinical evaluation. They said they have issues with people participated in evaluation and their way of participation, strategies and methods used in evaluation, clinical evaluation planning and emotional environment in evaluation; which influence their clinical evaluation. It seems; considering the mentioned issues, clinical evaluation process needs an overall revise in order to correctly assess students` progress toward clinical learning objectives so facilitate the development of students into safe, ethical and accountable practitioners. [Pazargadi P, Ashktorab T, Khosravi S, Esmaili Vardanjani SA. Iranian Nursing Students' Experiences and Viewpoints of Clinical Evaluation: a qualitative study. Life Sci J 2012;9(4):910-916] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 141