Nursing Students’ Perceptions of the Learning Environment and Supervision within the Clinical Placement

Abstract

Background: The clinical practice environment of nursing students is of great importance in nursing education. Today in Kazakhstan, there is a real need to develop and improve the learning environment and supervision within the clinical placement, which can be greatly facilitated by the use of results of the questionnaire Clinical Learning Environment, Supervision and Nurse Teacher (CLES+T) evaluation scale. Aim: The purpose is to improve clinical practice environment for nursing students by producing information based on CLES+T questionnaires from one of the Kazakh higher medical colleges. Methods: A quantitative research was conducted using the CLES+T evaluation scale. The participants were 110 applied nursing graduates who graduated between 2018 and 2020. The data was analyzed using SPSS 25 and descriptive statistics. Results: Nursing students agreed with certain statements of the CLES+T. However, respondents disagreed with items such as “The efforts of individual employees were appreciated” (58.2%), “The wards nursing philosophy was clearly defined” (57.3%), “Patients received individual nursing care” (55.5%) and “Documentation of nursing (e.g. nursing plans, daily recording of nursing procedures etc.) was clear” (55.4%). Also, it should be emphasized that 11.8% of respondents disagreed with statement “The staffs were generally interested in student supervision”, and a third of students (32.7%) disagreed with statement “Feedback from the ward manager could easily be considered as a learning experience”. Conclusion: Today, the role of a nurse in the health care system is significant, and therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the practical training of nursing students. This can be facilitated by a systematic survey of students using the CLES+T Scale. Based on the results obtained from this questionnaire survey, clinical practice of student nurses should be developed.