Nursing student's perceptions of their educational environment: A Comparison between expected and actual environment

Clinical learning environment has an important role in clinical learning of nursing students. Differences between expected and actual clinical learning environment of nursing student reduces their interest in clinical environment and clinical performance. Therefore, the aim of present study was to compare the perception of nursing students of expected and actual clinical learning environment in medical-surgical wards.

This descriptive-longitudinal study was conducted 75 baccalaureate nursing students from Urmia nursing & midwifery faculty. In the beginning of the semester, the expected perception of their clinical environment was determined and in the end of semester the actual perception of students of their clinical environment was determined again. For data analysis, clinical learning environment inventory was used that contain 49 item in six areas. Data analysis was conducted by SPSS software using descriptive and inferential statistics.

The findings showed that the average score of nursing students’ perception of expected clinical learning environment was 154.89 ± 14.05 and the average score of nursing students’ perception of actual clinical learning environment was 108.41 ± 12.78. The dependent sample t-test showed that there were statistical differences between actual and expected perception on nursing students regarding clinical learning environment.

The gap between nursing students’ perception of expected and actual clinical learning environment may have negative effects on their clinical learning. This indicates that nursing education managers should further attend to clinical learning environment of nursing students.