Quality of Clinical Evaluation from Viewpoint of Nurse Interns and Nursing Unit Clerks; Nursing Students of the School of Nursing and Midwifery

Quality of nurse training programs requires clinical evaluation. The purpose of this study was to achieve a perspective of realities from viewpoint of nursing students during their internship and clerkship. This study was descriptive and quantitative; 180 nurse inters and nursing unit clerks were enrolled for the study. Data was collected using a researcher made questionnaire. Content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by a group of faculty members and clinical professors; reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha (0.89). The questionnaire consisted of two parts; demographic data and data related to clinical evaluation in four areas including content of evaluation, the role of instructor in evaluation, evaluation process and outcome of evaluation. The questionnaire was scored on a five-point Likert scale from always to never. At the end, there were two open questions about suggestions on clinical evaluation. Data were analyzed by SPSS22, descriptive and analytic statistics. Results showed that nurse interns evaluated the instructor as good (4.05 ± 0.06), evaluation content as average (3.65 ± 0.06), evaluation process as average (2.77 ± 0.76) and outcome of evaluation as poor (2.41 ± 0.69). Nursing unit clerks evaluated the instructor as good (3.84 ± 0.59), evaluation content as average (3.51 ± 0.68), evaluation process as average (2.60 ± 0.78) and outcome of evaluation as poor (2.56 ± 0.63). According to the results, quality of clinical evaluation of nursing students requires a review in existing processes and tools, as well as revision in programs and clinical evaluations by planners and instructors.