NURSING STUDENTS' PERCEPTION OF THE MENTAL WORKLOAD RELATED TO THEIR CLASSROOM AND CLINICAL EXPERIENCE.
Contributors: Ohio State University.
Published: 1992
Number of pages: 319
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Education, Higher.; Health Sciences, Education.
Description: External circumstances often make it necessary for nursing students to have clinical experiences in which the focus of the clinical experience is not congruent with the focus of the content presented in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to evaluate what the students' perception of their mental workload was when the focus of the classroom content and the focus of the clinical experience was congruent and when the focus of the classroom and the focus of the clinical experience was incongruent. The purposive sample was composed of 12 nursing students who were assigned to the same clinical group. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect the data. The Subjective Mental Workload Assessment Technique was used to measure mental workload perception. Qualitative information was obtained during guided interviews. The information from the interviews was used to identify the students' perceptions regarding class and the clinical experience, how the students prepared for class and the clinical experience and what factors had affected their preparation during the week.

The data was obtained from each student once during each of five rotations through different maternal-child hospital units. The mental workload perception scores were analyzed with the Wilcoxon's Matched-Pair Rank Test. The mean and median were also used to evaluate group patterns. The qualitative information was analyzed with the use of The Ethnograph (Seidel, Kjolseth & Seymour, 1988) to identify patterns in the students' responses.

The results of this study indicate that there was no correlation between the students' mental workload perception and the congruence of the focus of the class content and the focus of the clinical experience. The students' mental workload progressively increased throughout the quarter. Lack of time to address multiple tasks and extracurricular obligations appeared to have the strongest impact on how students perceived their mental workload.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-08, Section: B, page: 4028.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, 1992.

School code: 0168.