A Nationwide Italian Cross-sectional Study on Nursing Students' Perceived Workplace Safety During Clinical Practice

Background Nursing students' perception of a safe clinical working environment may impact the development of professional skills and progression in the profession. Purpose The aims of this study were to describe to what extent nursing students perceive the working environments as safe during their most recent clinical rotation and to explore factors associated with their perception of a safe workplace environment. Methods A nationwide Italian cross-sectional study involving 9607 students in 27 universities across 95 three-year nursing programs was performed in 2015-2016, and secondary analyses were run in 2019. Results The workplace environment was perceived by students as only a little (n = 2598 [27.0%]), to some extent (n = 4048 [42.1%]), and always (n = 2555 [26.0%]) safe; 406 (4.2%) students reported to have never felt that the workplace as safe. At the multivariate level, factors promoting students' perception of a safe clinical environment were a setting offering higher (a) learning opportunities, (b) safety and nursing care quality, (c) quality of tutorial strategies, and (d) self-directed learning opportunities. Conclusions Nursing faculty should assess the quality of clinical settings before deciding on environments for students' learning experience.