Perceptions of Baccalaureate Graduates on their Clinical Nursing Education and its Effectiveness in their Service Delivery

Good clinical education underscores good nursing practice and is the avenue through which students develop clinical skills. Baccalaureate graduates have been perceived as less skilled professional nurses when compared with graduates from the diploma-based nursing programme. However, this assumption is based on a perceived deficiency of clinical education in the baccalaureate programme. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of baccalaureate graduates on their clinical education and the effectiveness of clinical education in their service delivery. This was a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, contextual study. Twenty-nine graduates from four different universities, who had worked for a minimum of two years post-graduation, were interviewed for a period of 45-90 minutes each. The graduates of the baccalaureate nursing programme indicated that their clinical education was adequate, despite limited time allocated for clinical education and challenges at the clinical placement site. From the study, the researchers recommended that the nursing curriculum be evaluated to balance the time allocated for the theoretical and clinical components of the programme, and to ensure that in future there is better theory-praxis articulation.