Jordanian undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of effective clinical teachers

Clinical teaching is a dynamic process that occurs in a variety of sociocultural contexts. The quality of student-teacher interaction in the clinical field can either facilitate or hinder the students' learning in the clinical area. This paper presents the results of a study to explore Jordanian undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of effective clinical teacher characteristics. The results showed that overall, the nursing students rated the professional competence of the clinical teacher as the most important characteristic, which when compared to the Western population was different. When male and female nursing students' perceptions were compared, no significant differences were found. However, responses of nursing students from the three academic years differed significantly in that second-year students rated the clinical teachers' relationship with students as most important and fourth-year students rated personal qualities of the clinical teachers as most important. The results were significant in that they were congruent with the students' level of education and most importantly, their cultural beliefs and values about education. (C) 1999 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.