Characteristics of a supportive clinical instructor in nursing training: A qualitative study

Context: Support has been one of the most basic needs of students in clinical training and its lack or weakness makes some problems for students’ learning. Aims: This study explained nursing students’ and instructors’ perceptions of the characteristics of a supportive instructor in clinical training. Setting and Design: In this qualitative study, participants were 17 undergraduate nursing students, 3 instructors, and 1 nurse who were selected by purposeful and theoretical sampling in 2017. Participants in this study were selected from nursing students of Babol University of Medical Sciences who had experienced at least one internship course in the hospital, instructors, and one nurse who were in their teaching environment. Materials and Methods: Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were employed to collect the study data. Statistical Analysis Used: Qualitative content analysis method was used. Results: Data analysis led to the extraction of two main themes that included personal and professional competence. Individual competence subthemes include patience and equanimity, courtesy, and capacity and subthemes such as having professional knowledge, having professional skill, effective communication ability, purposeful management of training, role pattern, bound to ethical principles, having positive attitude compared to profession and student and comrade of the student were obtained from the professional competence. Conclusions: The findings of the present study help nursing training managers to select the instructors for selecting instructors who have the necessary competencies to support students.