Factors Associated With Perception On Clinical Training Among Diploma Nursing Students In Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Background: Nursing education refers to formal learning and training in the science of nursing encompassing of both theory and clinical aspects to accelerate the patient’s return to normal health. Clinical training is one among the critical parts in nursing profession that determines the clinical competences among nurse students. Its impact is not limited to grades but also to the extent a student nurse delivers quality and cost-effective clinical services that are appropriately to each patient’s condition. A number of factors have been implicated to affect nurse student’s competency on clinical training. Objective: Current study intended to assess factors associated with perception on clinical training among diploma nursing students in Tanzania. Method: The study employed analytical cross-sectional study with quantitative research approach that involved 488 randomly selected respondents from eight diploma nursing training institutions in Central and Lake Zone, Tanzania. Self-administered semi-structured questionnaires were the main data collection tools. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 23) was used for data entry, cleaning, processing and analysis. Results: Study revealed that 51 % of the respondents had a low perception towards clinical training while 49% had a high perception. The results of the fitted model revealed that, the odds of female diploma nursing students were 6.737 more times likely to have high perception on clinical training than male students (AOR: 6.737; 95% CI: 1.63; 4.75, p= 0.008). Clinical training perception was also affected by living in campus (AOR: 43.8; 95% CI: 34.2; 54.4, p= 0.001) and studying in urban (AOR: 0.008; 95% CI: 0.01; 0.066, p= 0.001) area. Conclusion: Factors like gender, location of training institution and staying in or out campus have positive influence on positive perception of diploma nurse students on clinical training. It is therefore recommended to seriously consider these aspects in order to build and produce very competent and motivated nurse graduates into nursing practices.