Experiences of student nurses regarding clinical supervision by nursing educators during clinical placements, state hospitals, Windhoek, Namibia

Abstract

Student nurses’ clinical abilities are highly dependent on the quality of the clinical experience obtained, while placed in the clinical environment. The clinical environment has key role players, which include the clinical supervisor. The primary role of the clinical supervisor is to guide student nurses to become best-practice nursing professionals. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the experiences of student nurses regarding clinical supervision by nursing educators. The objectives of the study were to explore and describe the experiences of student nurses regarding clinical supervision by nursing educators during clinical placements at state hospitals, Windhoek, Namibia. Kolb learning cycle was used as the theoretical framework, constructivism was used as the philosophy of the study. The study employed a qualitative research approach, utilizing a descriptive phenomenological design. Nonprobability purposive sampling was employed, the study population were the 4th year student nurses from the selected institution during clinical placements. Data was collected employing in-depth face-to-face interviews and analyzed using Tesch’s method of data analysis. Two key themes emerged from the exploration and description of student nurses’ clinical supervision experiences, namely, key theme 1: Participants regard support and the presence of the nursing educators during clinical placement necessary, sub-themes were alleviated feelings of fear, motivate student nurses to continue irrespective of obstacles. Key theme 2: Participants experienced a non-conducive environment influence on learning during clinical supervision that may influence learning of which sub-themes were: student nurses missed learning opportunities due to a lack of resources such as equipment and supplies, duration of clinical placement could be too short, coerced evaluations of student nurses by nursing educators. Recommendations were made to the tertiary and training institutions, and the Ministry of Health and Social Services. Further research is needed on student nurses clinical learning experiences in other state and private hospitals that provide clinical learning in other regions, clinical learning experiences of male student nurses in training, research on nursing educator’s clinical accompaniment experiences, research on clinical staff’s experiences , nursing educators at the tertiary and training institution to support student nurses in breaching the theory practice gap, experiences and perceptions of student nurses in clinical learning across various hospitals settings, research on perception of clinical teaching by registered nurses in clinical placements, research on experiential III learning and instructed on how to provide support to the student nurses in order to facilitate learning, clinical supervision experiences of nursing students in other regions, Nurse educators’ clinical accompaniment experiences should be explored to find depth in some of the information that was revealed by the nursing students during this study.