Evaluation of a PBL strategy in clinical supervision of nursing students: patient-centred training in student-dedicated treatment rooms.

AIM: The present study aimed at investigating staff members' and nursing students' perception of and satisfaction with an intervention involving patient-centred training in student-dedicated treatment rooms during clinical supervision.
BACKGROUND: It is well known that clinical education is important and that the clinical learning environment influences the development of nursing students' ability to solve clinical problems. In the present study, an intervention using a problem-based learning (PBL) strategy was introduced and evaluated in clinical education. The PBL strategy is called 'Patient-centred training in student-dedicated treatment rooms'. DESIGN AND METHODS: Descriptive; both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. A questionnaire and focus group interviews were used. RESULT: Most participants found the PBL strategy to be highly satisfactory, both for staff and for students. The students seemed to feel that their time in clinical education had been used efficiently.
CONCLUSION: Integration of theory and practice during clinical training has been emphasized as a necessary component, and the new strategy, which involves a method of promoting students' reflection, represents one way of facilitating such integration, in that it may bridge the gap between theory and practice. More extensive and more specific research is need in the future.