A process evaluation of a mobile cooperation intervention: A mixed methods study.

BACKGROUND: A mobile cooperation intervention was developed to facilitate the cooperation of nursing students with nurse teacher and to improve the students' clinical learning outcomes. The intervention consisted of training in a mobile application's functionality and its use during clinical practicum cooperation procedures. OBJECTIVES: To describe the development of a mobile application for student-teacher cooperation and to examine the acceptability of the mobile cooperation intervention for advancing intervention development. DESIGN: A user-centred design and a mobile application development lifecycle model were applied to develop a mobile application. A process evaluation that used mixed methods design was conducted within the intervention group after a randomized controlled trial of a complex mobile cooperation intervention. SETTING: The clinical practicum wards of seven hospitals in a hospital district in Finland. PARTICIPANTS: Second-year pre-registration nursing students (N = 52) from one nursing school. METHODS: Process evaluation questionnaires were completed upon completion of the five week intervention and essays were written by the students eleven weeks after the intervention ended. RESULTS: A system usability scale (SUS) assessed the overall usability of the mobile application as rather good (a mean SUS score of 69.86 out of 100). Positive feedback about the mobile application's usability and utility was reported and recommendations for further development were highlighted. The intervention demonstrated high acceptability. In general, the students actively used the mobile application for intervention procedures at home and in the clinical practicum ward. CONCLUSIONS: The findings support the high acceptability of mobile cooperation intervention and its potential while also providing evidence for the development team's future development of the mobile application. Additionally, this study provides an example of mobile application development and process evaluation in nursing education research.

Clinical education and training of student nurses in four moderately new European Union countries: Assessment of students' satisfaction with the learning environment.

Nurses underwent different models of education during various historical periods. The recent decade in Europe has been marked with educational transitions for the nursing profession related to Bologna Declaration and enlargement of the European Union. This paper aims to explore the situation of clinical placements for student nurses and assess students' satisfaction with the learning environment in four relatively new member states of European Union: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania and Romania. The data for cross-sectional quantitative study were collected during the exploratory phase of EmpNURS Project via a web based questionnaire which utilized a part of Clinical Learning Environment scale (CLES + T). The students evaluated their clinical learning environment mainly positively. The students' utter satisfaction with their clinical placements reached a high level and strongly correlated with the supervisory model. Although the commonest model for supervision was traditional group supervision, the most satisfied students had the experience of individualised supervision. The study gives a picture of the satisfaction of students with the learning environment and, moreover, with clinical placement education of student nurses in four EU countries. The results highlight the individualized supervision model as a crucial factor of students' total satisfaction during their clinical training periods.