Abstract:

Introduction:
Good teachers can optimize students’ learning experiences by providing support, direction and feedback, and they can do this effectively through feedback to assess their performance and point out areas for improvement. The quality of the student-teacher interaction in the clinical area can either facilitate or hinder the students' integration of theory to practice. It has been hypothesized that clinical instructors must acquire effective clinical teacher characteristics if they want to facilitate students' learning in the clinical practice. Caring behaviors of clinical instructors have emerged as an important component of the nursing student-clinical instructor relationship. Clinical instructors demonstrating caring behaviors decrease student nurses’ anxiety levels and increases learning and the student’s ability to perform safely and effectively with patients.

Purpose of the study:
To describe nursing students’ learning experiences in the clinical area and describe the caring teaching behaviors of clinical instructors from a students’ perspective.

Methods:
A descriptive, cross-sectional design used. A convenience sample of 323 nursing students from second, third and fourth year at the Faculty of Nursing, Menofia University participated in the study. The Maastricht Clinical Teaching Questionnaire to evaluate the clinical instructors, and the Nursing Students' Perceptions of Instructor Caring to measure clinical instructor’s caring behaviors were used.

Results:
Student nurses responses ranged between ratings of slightly disagree to slightly agree. Findings indicate that nursing students perceived caring behaviors in the subscales of respectful sharing, appreciative of life’s meaning and supportive learning climate as most frequently demonstrated. On the other hand, caring behaviors in the subscales of instills confidence through caring and control versus flexibility was reported as least frequently demonstrated by clinical instructors.

Conclusion:
Findings have offered important insight into student nurses’ perspectives of their clinical teachers. Findings might be employed to improve faculty awareness of students’ perspective on their teaching performance.

Keywords:

Clinical setting, Teaching Behaviors, Students’ Experience.