Gap between Theory and Practice in the Nursing Education: Perception among College of Nursing Students in Kuwait

Abstract

Nursing education typically includes instruction in both theoretical and practical aspects of nursing, integrating classroom learning with clinical practice. The most common reasons included that the theory was about building a knowledge base while practice was about learning nursing skills. The success of an education program requires examining the extent to which the knowledge has been efficiently used in the work place to raise the quality of work performance and checking the extent to which one feels that his or her performance has improved; these factors are affected by the amount of learning transfer. This descriptive design was used to study to identify the gap between theory and practice of nursing students at the college of Nursing (PAAET), Kuwait. Totally 83 female students and 59 male students participated in this study. The study results found that, the responds of students in theory, practice and learning experience for all statements are not equally distributed. The p value corresponding to the demographic variable Gender is less than 0.05 and is significant at 5% level and hence there is significant difference between the mean theory scores of male and female students. The researchers concluded that, theory and practice gap was proven among nursing students.