The Relationship between Clinical Competence and Clinical Self-efficacy among Nursing and Midwifery Students

Introduction  Selfefficacy in clinical performance had an important role in applying competencies also competencies and selfefficacy in clinical performance influenced to quality care of nursing and midwifery students. So the present study aimed to define the relationship between clinical competencies and clinical selfefficacy among nursing and midwifery students. Materials and Methods  This is a crosssectional study conducted on 150 of nursing and midwifery students in Isfahan University of Medical Science, selected through two stage sling in 2014. The participant completed questionnaires about personal/ educational characteristics and nursing competencies questionnaire (18 items) and clinical selfefficacy scale (37 items). The data were analyzed by, Pearson statistical test, ttest, variance analysis through SPSS version16. Results The results showed that 50% (n=75) and 37.4% (n=56) of nursing and midwifery students had good clinical competence and clinical SelfEfficacy, respectively. Also the mean competencies and selfefficacy in clinical performance scores were 35.05± 1.2 and 76.03± 0.4 respectively. Pearson correlation coefficient showed that there was a positive linear correlation between the score of clinical competence and clinical selfefficacy (P 0.05, r=0.73). Conclusion The results reveal that selfefficacy is a significant predictor of a student s clinical performance therefore increasing clinical competence related to high clinical Selfefficacy.