Clinical Teacher's Effectiveness: Military Nursing Schools Students' Expectations for Best Learning

Abstract

The effective clinical teacher can either facilitate or hinder the students’ learning in the clinical area. This study aimed to elicit the characteristics of effective clinical teacher as expected by students of military secondary technical nursing schools and to rank a list of most important characteristics based on the priority stated by nursing students for best learning. A descriptive design was utilized in this study done in two military secondary schools of nursing located in Cairo and Alexandria, All nurse students enrolled in the designated schools during the year of the study were included in this study. Those who had absenteeism days exceeding the officially allowed number were excluded from the study sample. Their total number was 85 students: 50 from the military nursing school in Alexandria and 35 from the military nursing school in Cairo. Data collection tools include the Nursing Clinical Teacher Effectiveness Inventory (NCTEI). The fieldwork was from March to May 2008. . The results revealed that the majority of students ranked the10 most expected and important characteristics of effective teacher throughout the five categories: 3 items were from personality characteristics, 3 items from teaching ability, 1 from interpersonal relationship, 1 from evaluation and 2 from and nursing competence, with agreement percentage ranged from(94.1-100%). conclusion and recommendations: The areas in which the researchers found high students' agreement can serve as standards to achieve quality nursing education, also it may be used to define competences required for qualified and effective clinical educators recruitment procedures. However, further studies are needed to determine which of the characteristics are valid indicators for quality education skills. Future studies should focus on the point view of both nurse teachers themselves and the professionals in academic nursing field towards effective clinical teacher.

Keywords: effective clinical teacher, nursing students, clinical education