Staff Nurses Experiences of Clinical Learning

Objective:  Clinical learning is integral to nursing education and preparation for professional practice. Increased enrollments in baccalaureate nursing programs require more staff nurses to supervise students in the workplace. Researchers have found students’ learning, impressions of nursing, and perceptions of clinical learning are greatly influenced by nurses in the workplace. Understanding how staff nurses experience their work with students is important.  Little is known about how nurses working with students in unstructured situations (i.e., not preceptorship), experience their role.  This study’s purpose was to understand the unstructured experiences of staff nursing in an obstetrical unit with undergraduate nursing students present.

Design: Naturalistic Inquiry was used to explore staff nurses experiences with undergraduate nursing students during students’ unstructured clinical learning experience. 

Setting: Family Birth Center in Pacific Northwest.

Sample: Convenience sample, 12 English speaking, baccalaureate-prepared registered nurses who worked in unstructured manner with nursing students.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews conducted and recorded by researcher.  Participants shared their experiences of working with students.  Data were analyzed using an interpretive continuous approach according to Lincoln and Guba’s elucidation of Glaser and Strauss’s constant-comparative method.  Data were stored, organized and coded using NVivo 8®. Data collection and analysis ceased when categories were saturated and no new information surfaced.  Demographic data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. An experienced qualitative researcher provided oversight to ensure accuracy.  Credibility, transferability, dependability, confirmability were used to ensure trustworthiness. 

Results:  Five themes emerged: (1) Giving and Receiving: Working with students provided nurses opportunities to give back to their profession; nurses learned from students; (2) Advancing Professionally-Personally: Many nurses took advantage of workplace incentives to gain additional compensation and opportunities; (3) Balancing Act: Nurses balanced their typical workload with student learning needs and provision of safe, quality care; students slowed nurses down; (4) Getting to Know and Working with You:  Nurses worked to know student personally and tailored the learning experience; Nurses desired students be prepared; (5) Past and Present: Clinical experiences exert long lasting impressions.

Conclusion/Implications for nursing practice:

Working with students is a benefit for many nurses. Workplace learning may increase when students are prepared prior to entering the clinical settings. Nurses working with students should be judiciously selected.  Future research should be aimed at discovering tangible rewards and benefits that motivate nurses to work in an unstructured manner with students and determine how students in the workplace influence patient safety and quality of care.

Keywords:  Clinical learning, undergraduate nursing students, staff nurses, maternity nursing