Assessing clinical practice of student nurses: Views of teachers, mentors and students.

Background: Assessment received by students affects the way that they conduct their studies and shapes their interests in clinical placements. It is therefore important that mentors and teachers have high quality assessment strategies to ensure the competence of nursing students.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to describe the views and experiences of nursing students, nursing teachers, and mentors on the final assessment of nursing students in clinical practice. The study also investigates respondents' views on using a standardized national or European scheme for clinical assessment in the future.

Design: Descriptive survey design with a questionnaire.

Settings: Implemented in five Finnish universities of applied sciences and in five partner hospitals.

Participants: Nursing students (n=276), nursing teachers (n=108) and mentors (n=225).

Methods: A questionnaire was used to collect data. Survey data were analyzed by using SPSS version 19. Descriptive statistics and cross tabulations were used to characterize the data.

Results: Nursing students felt that they had spent enough time with their mentors during their clinical practice period to ensure that the mentors could assess their behavior. Mentors also evaluated that they had spent enough time with the students. Students and mentors both indicated occasional difficulties with the language used in the competence assessment document. Most of the nursing students and mentors shared the view that it is always necessary for a teacher to be involved in the final assessment discussion.

Conclusions: The study highlights the importance of assessment skills of mentors and the important role of the teachers. Findings from this study indicate that nursing students' clinical practice assessment already includes many good practices, but we still have some difficulties in ensuring effective measures of competence.