Abstract
M.Cur.
Learning to care for patients and providing safe nursing care is central to any nursing programme. The effects of caring actions are lifelong, positively impact patient outcomes, and result in nurses’ improved physical and emotional wellbeing. Caring behaviours are taught through instruction and clinical instructors’ role modelling while training student nurses. Clinical instructors are in the optimal position to give student nurses the foundation for lifelong yearning to provide nursing care to patients at the bedside. During a student nurse’s clinical placement, they complete clinical assessments. In these assessments, students demonstrate practical and theoretical knowledge and have interactions with the clinical instructor. The purpose of this study was to determine and examine the presence of caring during clinical assessments in five campuses of a private nursing education institution in South Africa. Recommendations were formulated to facilitate the presence of caring during student nurses’ clinical assessments. Caring interactions between clinical instructors and student nurses has been shown to have lasting effects on the type of care the student nurse provides during their training and into their career as a nurse once qualified. A quantitative, non-experimental, descriptive research design was used in this study. The researcher employed a questionnaire the “Nursing Students’ Perceptions of Instructor Caring” to collect the required data. The data were statistically analysed using factor analysis and inferential statistics, and the researcher maintained validity and reliability throughout the study. The researcher followed the ethical considerations of beneficence, autonomy and justice to protect the at-risk population in this study; student nurses. The research findings suggest there is a correlation between clinical instructors’ characteristics and student nurses’ perceptions of caring. Overall, it was determined that student nurses are able to perceive the presence of caring during clinical assessments. Recommendations to improve the facilitation of caring during clinical assessments were provided.