Achieving Clinical Competencies Through Community-Based Clinical Experiences.

Background: Twenty-five percent of American adults experience a diagnosable psychiatric mental health (PMH) problem each year, and acute care medical-surgical nurses carry on average a five- to six-patient load per shift. Traditionally, U.S. PMH clinical experiences have occurred on inpatient units located within acute care hospitals or psychiatric hospital settings. However, many nursing programs are moving much of the PMH clinical experience to community-based settings.

Objectives: This study aims to investigate how prelicensure undergraduate baccalaureate (BSN) student nurses and their faculty perceive students' ability to achieve learning outcomes in community-based PMH clinical settings. This study's research questions include the following: (a) What are student nurses' perceptions of their abilities to achieve learning outcomes in community-based PMH clinical settings? (b) What are faculty's perceptions of the students' abilities to achieve learning outcomes in community-based PMH clinical settings? (c) What are student nurses' perceptions of their abilities to transfer knowledge gained in their community-based PMH clinical experiences to other health care settings?

Design: Qualitative descriptive study with data collected through semistructured interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, and campus and clinical site visits.

Results: Three student themes emerged from the data: meeting the challenges of developing PMH nursing skills, sharing multiple experiences of feeling competent, and empowering all nurses through PMH nursing skills. Three themes also emerged from the faculty data: seizing the day(s), sharing competency, and broadly empowering nursing students.

Conclusions: Baccalaureate students are able to achieve PMH clinical competencies through the use of community-based experiences and to transfer PMH competencies to other clinical settings.