Experiences of professional nurses concerning clinical teaching of nursing students in clinics of Engela district

Abstract

The main goal of clinical teaching is to give aspiring professional educators the chance to develop and demonstrate their instructional competency. The practical teaching experience has been carefully planned to be as thorough and realistic as regular instruction. Clinical teaching allows students to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world situations, making it a crucial component of nursing education. The professional nurses who work in the clinics give the students hands-on education to ensure that they get the most out of their clinical experiences. This study explored and described the experiences of professional nurses providing clinical teaching to nursing students in clinics within the Engela District. The researcher employed the qualitative, philosophical, interpretive research design to gain an in-depth understanding of these experiences. Purposive sampling was used to select 15 professional nurses working in clinics in the Engela District to participate in in-depth, semi-structured interviews. An interview schedule guided data collection, and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, allowing for the identification of recurring patterns and themes. To ensure the trustworthiness of the findings, credibility was established through member checking, dependability was maintained by keeping an audit trail, and confirmability was ensured through researcher reflexivity. Transferability was enhanced by providing rich, detailed descriptions of the context and participants. Four themes and seventeen subthemes emerged from the analysis. The findings showed that professional nurses employed various strategies to teach student nurses in clinical settings, including promoting reflective thinking, creating task-based opportunities, and modelling professional behaviour. Despite their efforts, they faced challenges such as time constraints, language barriers, and limited resources, which impacted their ability to effectively support clinical learning. The study highlights the need for ongoing support, training, and resource allocation to enhance the effectiveness of clinical teaching in rural health settings.