Baccalaureate Nursing Graduates Perception of their Actual Clinical Instructional Experiences and its Importance for Preparation for Practice

Background: The clinical instructional experiences provide learning opportunities and aid in the transition to the professional role. The goal of the clinical experience is to prepare students for entry into practice.Aim of the Study: To examine baccalaureate nursing graduates’ perception of their actual clinical instructional experiences and importance of those experiences for preparation for practice.Design: A cross sectional descriptive, exploratory design used both quantitative and qualitative methods was utilized in this study.Methods: The study was conducted at college of nursing, Tiba University, Al Madina in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A purposive sample of all recent bacaullerate nursing graduates (102) who completed their internship year at the academic year 1431-1432 were constitute the study sample. Data were collected through utilizing, clinical instructional experiences questionnaire (CIEQ) to measure baccalaureate nursing graduate’s perception of their actual clinical experiences and the importance of those experiences for their preparation to entry into practice.Results: Overall, the mean scores of the clinical instructional experiences subscales on both the actual and importance ratings were high, indicating a more positive than negative experience. However, the mean scores for the importance ratings were statistically significantly higher than the actual scores, on the clinical teaching subscale. This indicated that, although the academic clinical experiences were generally positive, there were significant differences in what actually occurred and what graduates deemed important for their preparation for practice. Clinical instructional experiences are viewed by graduates as very important opportunity for preparation to entry into practice.Recommendations: The preceptorship experience should be supported as an important method for clinical learning that helps to ease the “reality shock” experienced by so many new graduates. Clinical instructional models need to be reevaluated. Students need more opportunities to learn the “real-world” practice of nursing during their academic program.