Abstract:

Background:
Clinical learning is among the important components of nursing educational programs. Learning is an active process its detection allows the instructors to offer more effective education. Clinical learning is among the important issues leading perceiving the importance of nursing students’ performance in clinical environments and its effect on development of nursing career.

Methods:
This is the first part of a mixed method study. In the first step qualitative content analysis was applied to define nursing students’ perceptions of clinical learning concept and the effective factors in clinical learning. The purposeful sampling method was used and 22 nursing students (in AZAD University of Lahijan and Langroud Nursing and Midwifery school) were selected for the interviews. To gather richer data, interviews were also conducted with 5 instructors and 2 nurses. Semi-structured and interactive interviews were used to collect data. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed. The data obtained from the first step (qualitative) were analyzed through qualitative content analysis and using MAXQDA2010 software.

Results:
Within the data analysis in qualitative step, the preliminary results of data analysis involve 980 initial codes which were reduced to 9 category and 3 themes. The main themes including “human resources of clinical learning”, “learning conditions”, and clinical learning strategies” were extracted as well as the categories (socio-cultural factors, student factors, teacher factors, staff factors, classmates factors, physical factors,management factors,improving clinical skills, improving theoretical knowledge) and subcategories.

Conclusion:
Paying attention to all factors related to clinical learning can lead to preparation of better conditions for learning. By providing conditions such as gradual familiarization of the students with actual situations, recruiting more perseverant students, applying mentorship in clinical education, promotion of educational standards in hospitals, and applying cooperative learning methods for creating collaborative sprit in the clerkship environment can assist the students to achieve clinical competency.

Keywords:

Clinical learning, content analysis, nursing students, qualitative study.