Managing at risk nursing students: The clinical instructor experience.

Background: Clinical nursing instructors are responsible for providing optimal learning experiences and evaluating student performance, while maintaining patient safety in acute care settings. Our undergraduate Bachelor of Science in nursing program in Canada recently experienced an unusually high number of students who failed a compulsory medical surgical clinical course. Due to these high numbers, additional dedicated clinical groups were arranged for those students who were repeating.

Method: Seven clinical instructors participated in a focus group to share their experiences of managing students at risk. Thematic analysis was conducted on the interview data.

Results: The results revealed four themes: (a) supporting student learning while ensuring patient safety, (b) balancing responsibilities and professional obligations (c) feeling physically and emotionally drained (d) experiencing self-doubt in making decisions (e) seeking and finding support.

Conclusion: The complexity of supervising at risk for failure nursing students in the clinical setting has an impact on instructors, patients, the educational institution and other students. Findings from this study offer a deeper understanding of the personal and professional impact on instructors when managing at risk nursing students and suggests ideas for future research, including examining the student perspective.