Using care plans in mental health nursing clinical education: are we forcing students to pretend?

Purpose Students have an opportunity to integrate their theoretical knowledge into practice, develop skills to provide quality nursing care and gain clinical experience by using care plans. For this reason, it is important and necessary to identify students' feelings, opinions and behaviors regarding care plans. This study aims to evaluate students' opinions about working with a care plan to develop a realistic practice and achievable goals in clinical training of mental health nursing education. Design/methodology/approach A total of 90 senior nursing students were enrolled in this study, and data were collected from 63 students who received informed consent. In the data collection, a structured "Learning-Teaching Process Assessment Form" which consists of two parts created by the researchers in accordance with the qualitative research model was applied at the end of training period. The data were analyzed manually by researchers with "thematic analysis" method. Findings The analysis of data revealed three categories and ten themes. More than half of the students stated that they were not satisfied with the care plan, but they found working with a care plan as realistic, whereas the majority of them found it difficult planning a care plan, but found it beneficial to working with the care plan. Originality/value This study results show that different strategies are needed for students to implement nursing process effectively.