A qualitative study of nursing student experiences of clinical practice

Background: Nursing student's experiences of their clinical practice provide greater insight to develop an effective clinical teaching strategy in nursing education. The main objective of this study was to investigate student nurses' experience about their clinical practice. Methods: Focus groups were used to obtain students' opinion and experiences about their clinical practice. 90 baccalaureate nursing students at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery) were selected randomly from two hundred students and were arranged in 9 groups of ten students. To analyze the data the method used to code and categories focus group data were adapted from approaches to qualitative data analysis. Results: Four themes emerged from the focus group data. From the students' point of view," initial clinical anxiety", "theory-practice gap"," clinical supervision", professional role", were considered as important factors in clinical experience. Conclusion: The result of this study showed that nursing students were not satisfied with the clinical component of their education. They experienced anxiety as a result of feeling incompetent and lack of professional nursing skills and knowledge to take care of various patients in the clinical setting. © 2005 Sharif and Masoumi; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.