Percepción de los estudiantes de enfermería sobre el entorno de aprendizaje clínico: el clima social

Abstract

Study Objective: to know nursing students perceptions about clinical learning environment during their clinical field placements. Design: qualitative study. Setting: University Hospital of San Juan and School of Nursing of Alicante, University of Alicante (Spain). Subjects: nursing students that made their practice settings at this hospital during the academic course 2002-2003. Methodology: participant observation, semistructured interview and content analisis. Results: generally, nurses allow the students to take decisions, but without establishing differences between their ability and knowlege; students indicated the lack of consistent arguments for clarificating doubts and believed positive the existence of cientific literature (nursing protocols, books, research papers) for consultation in the wards. They consider that student implicacion level in ward activities, is going to depend on themselves, the ward characteristics, as well as the staff. Sometimes students do not perceive the nurse-tutor figure clearly defined. They say that the common activities and procedures are explained to them in detail at the beginning of the practice period. They indicate the disadvantages of distribute tasks to be done versus patients to take care of working depending on tasks instead of working center on patients. Conclusions: students usually adopt the roll of apprentice, but sometimes, due to the complex social context of the practice settings, they adopt the role, that we can call, "precarious worker with educative remuneration".