Proposing a guide for clinical practice of international nursing degree students in Finland : Developmental work

Abstract

Throughout their clinical practice in Finnish health care settings, differences in culture and language have proven to be major impediments to international nursing students’ positive learning experience. The ramifications of such barriers have been widely known in terms of their negative impact on international nursing students’ quality of learning as well as their competence. The students have also expressed a lack of awareness over the expectations from them during clinical trainings. To address these and owing to the importance of retaining international nursing students in Finnish health care system which is facing several challenges, it is imperative to improve international students’ clinical learning experience in practical ways and irrespective of their language abilities. Therefore, the current thesis was aimed at proposing a solution to clinical practice of international nursing degree students in Finland. Moreover, in the background, there was an expressed need by a hospital ward in the Kuopio University Hospital regarding a guide for clinical practice of international nursing degree students during clinical trainings in the hospital wards.

The current thesis was conducted as a development work. A general guide to clinical practice of international nursing degree students in Finland was proposed with the aim of facilitating and supporting the learning experience of international nursing students during their clinical practice in Finland. To collect and enrich data for the final guide, literature search, field experience and observation as well as dialogic discussions were used. In the end, the guide components constituted the current competence requirements for general nursing education in Europe as well as in Finland. The working life partner of the development work was the Northern Savo Welfare Area (Pohjois-Savon Hyvinvointialue in Finnish) – Kuopio University Hospital. In addition, some basic instructions for learning the Finnish language in the context of clinical learning was included in the guide. Furthermore, the guide was created in a general form to make it suitable for use by a variety of inpatient medical wards providing care for adult patients.

Upon its completion, the guide was piloted for the 2nd and 3rd year international nursing degree students at Savonia UAS as well as a representative from KUH. The piloting phase was followed by collecting feedback which reflected a positive attitude towards the product and its intention of providing support for international nursing students. While this could translate into the achievement of the product’s aim, the author acknowledged that a better evaluation of this product requires time, the product’s proper implementation and a seamless collaboration between the students and their nurse mentors. Future studies could improve the current product by adjusting it for use in a specific ward as well as pediatric and psychiatric wards. The guide can also be complemented by adding more practice specific activities.