BACCALAUREATE NURSING STUDENTS' EXPERIENCE OF LEARNING IN A CLINICAL SETTING.
Contributors: University of Florida.
Published: 1984
Number of pages: 196
Subjects: Education, Health.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: A major component of basic nursing educational programs takes place in a clinical practice setting. Little research has been reported on the ways that students learn in a clinical setting. The purpose of the study was to explore and describe nursing students' experience of learning within the context of one clinical practice setting where the students learned to provide care for acutely ill infants. Learning was approached as a process that takes place in a complex social context and that is affected by the interaction between the students and all of the contextual variables. Data collected using the techniques of participant observation and ethnographic interviewing were analyzed to identify the components of the nursing students' experience of learning in a clinical setting.

The findings of the study included a nursing student perspective of learning in a clinical setting and a sequence of steps in the process of learning a clinical skill. The effect of the nursing student perspective on the learning process was also described.

The nursing student perspective consisted of six goals--to do no harm to a patient, to help patients, to integrate theory-based knowledge from lecture and reading into clinical practice, to learn clinical practice skills, to look good as a student, and to look good as a nurse. Within this perspective the students also defined roles for themselves, their instructors, and the staff nurses in the clinical setting.

The process of learning a clinical skill consisted of observing, rehearsing, doing, and evaluating. The nursing student perspective affected this learning process by determining students' choices about each step.

The steps of learning a clinical skill combined with the nursing student perspective were consistent with the components of observational learning in Albert Bandura's social learning theory. The nursing student perspective and the effects of that perspective also reflected the social interactional making of meaning identified with symbolic interactionism. The students defined the learning environment and then used that definition to shape their responses to the educational program.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-03, Section: A, page: 0622.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, 1984.

School code: 0070.