Clinical Instructors' Perspectives on the Assessment of Clinical Knowledge of Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Descriptive Phenomenological Approach.

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to determine clinical instructors' perceptions of the assessments used to evaluate the clinical knowledge of undergraduate nursing students. This study uses a descriptive phenomenological approach. Purposive sampling was used to recruit sixteen clinical instructors for semi-structured interviews between August and December 2019. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed using a modified Colaizzi's seven-step method. Four criteria were used to ensure the study's validity credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Three themes were identified in the clinical instructors' views on evaluating the clinical performance of student nurses familiarity with students, patchwork clinical learning, and differing perceptions of the same scoring system. The study results suggest a need for a reliable, valid, and consistent approach to evaluating students' clinical knowledge. If the use of patchwork clinical internships for student nurses is unavoidable, a method for assessing student nurses' clinical performance that requires instructor consensus is necessary.