Abstract
The mandate to increase nurses training by 20% per annum was given by Gauteng
Province Premier in his state of address in 2004. The increased number of learner
nurses has reduced the ability of lecturers in the nursing college under study to use
traditional method of demonstrating clinical skills (Woolley & Jarvis, 2006:73).
Responding to the challenges of teaching clinical skills to a large number of learner
nurses using the traditional method of clinical demonstrations led to the lecturers
exploring other teaching strategies that would be effective in learners achieving clinical
competence. Virtual technology has been used successfully in this regard (Sadler &
Nelson, 2007:83).
The purpose of this study is to explore and describe the experiences of learner nurses
in a large class regarding the use of virtual technology in a nursing college in order to
describe the strategies to improve the use of virtual technology as a clinical teaching
strategy. A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, and contextual phenomenological
design was used in order to gain an understanding of the lived experiences of learner
nurses regarding the use of virtual technology in demonstrating clinical skills to a large
class.
The selected population were third-year learner nurses doing completing the Diploma in
Nursing (General, Psychiatric and Community) and Midwifery who were exposed to the
use of virtual technology as a method to demonstrate clinical skills to a large class. The
purposive sampling method was used. The sample for this study comprises third-year
learner nurses who were exposed to the use of virtual technology as a method to
demonstrate clinical skills to a large class. Individual, phenomenological, semistructured
interviews were conducted and an audiotape recorder was used to record the
interviews with the participants’ permission. Field notes were taken to enrich the data
(Burns & Grove, 2009:355). Data was analysed using Tesch’s protocol of open coding
qualitative data analysis (Creswell, 2009:186)...
M.Cur. (Professional Nursing Science)