Barriers and Facilitators to Clinical Education from the Perspective of Junior and Senior Nursing Students.

INTRODUCTION: Clinical education is an essential component of nursing education programs. Identification of factors which affects clinical education would help in improvement of the quality of clinical education. The aim of this study was to determine the barriers and facilitators to clinical education from the perspective of junior and senior nursing students in Kermanshah University of Medical sciences.

MATERIALS & METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 169 nursing students were selected by convenience sampling method. Data were collected by questionnaire and included questions on facilitating factors (34 items) and inhibiting factors (30 items) of clinical education. Data were analyzed by SPSS (ver.17) software.

RESULTS: Junior students reported the respect to ethics in clinical settings as a main facilitating factor, while seniors reported the providing an opportunity for repeating different nursing skills as a main facilitator factor. Moreover, not providing an opportunity for doing nursing care independently was the main barrier of clinical education from the perspective of juniors while exhaustion of instructors was the main barriers from the seniors' perspective.

CONCLUSION: In conclusion, clinical education is a complicated process which needs the collaboration between clinical instructor, student, and clinical staff. Appropriate communication between clinical instructor and nursing student can support and facilitate the clinical learning. Moreover, health care systems as well as nursing schools should try to remove the barriers in the scope of clinical learning.