Undergraduate nursing students’ clinical training in intensive care units: critically ill patients’ perspectives Nermine M. Elcokany, Rawhia S. Dogham, Samah A. Shalaby Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University 1

 Nursing education in Egypt encountered a tremendous change over the past decades, which mainly focused on the provision of highly qualified professional future nurses.  Furthermore, clinical training is considered as an essential element in nursing education to enhance students’ knowledge, skills and attitude.

 Critical care nursing students master their clinical practice based on the scope of critical care nursing practice that includes; critically ill patient, critical care environment and critical care nurse.  During clinical training, nursing student can be considered as a vital member within the multidisciplinary team who collaborates and participates in direct patient care.

 Many patients accept nursing student’s presence in clinical settings but with a wide diversity of their degree of involvement in direct bedside care. Whereas, some patients agree that the students can access their medical files and attend clinical rounds.  On the other hand, some patients acknowledge the presence of nursing students with their instructors.

 Since critical care nursing students’ clinical experience in intensive care units specially in teaching hospitals is very crucial for clinical learning with subsequent positive implication on future nurses’ professional development, minimizing theory-clinical gap and achieving overall quality of nursing education.

 There is a lack of nursing research conducted to explore the patients’ perception of their experience with nursing students in clinical settings whereas the majority of research were regarding patients’ perception of medical students as well as no study conducted among critical ill patient population.

To explore critically ill patients' perspectives of undergraduate nursing students clinical training in Intensive Care Units. Aim of the study

Research Design Descriptive

Setting Two general adult ICUs in MUH Alexandria, Egypt.

Sample

Tool Patients' perspectives regarding nursing students clinical practice

Tool Part I Socio-demographic data of the patients such as: age, gender Part 2 Assessment of Patient’s perspectives

1.Permission to conduct the study was obtained 2.Tool was developed by the researchers based on the related literature. 3.A structured interview method was used for data collection Method

Distribution of the patients according to their socio-demographic data Age (yrs)

Distribution of the patients according to their socio-demographic data Sex

Distribution of the patients according to their willingness to be cared for by nursing students

Patients’ perception regarding general appearance of nursing students

Patients’ perception regarding competence of nursing students

Patients’ perception regarding communication skills of nursing students

Attitude of patient towards nursing students

Conclusion The majority patients are willing to be cared for by critical care nursing students. In addition, they agree with their general appearance and communication skills. On the other side, they have a conflict regarding their competencies.

There should be direct communication between nurse educators and patients regarding care provided by nursing students. Recommendations

Undergraduate nursing students should be prepared well for clinical training to provide high quality of nursing care and maintain patient safety. Recommendations