Significant Changes In The Clinical Environment

There have been significant changes in undergraduate nursing education for the last decade with the greater emphasis on students' experiences and learning in the clinical environment (McCarthy & Murphy, 2010). These changes have come at a time when hospitals are struggling to hire qualified staff nurses while also managing increasing numbers and complexity of patient populations (Lillibridge, 2007) . Clinical learning is an essential component in the curriculum of pre-registration nursing programmes. The clinical environment encompasses all that surrounds the student nurse, including the clinical settings, the equipment, the staff, the patients, the nurse mentor, and the nurse teach (Papp, Markkanen, & Bonsdorff, 2003). During the clinical learning, nursing students are allocated to different clinical settings for developing their clinical competencies. Nursing students are guided in the clinical learning by

S. K. Chan, 2001).The quality of clinical learning environment has an impact on promoting clinical learning during the clinical practicum. The previous study raised that clinical teachers or preceptor and the learning environments are the main factors determining the quality of the clinical learning(Baillie, 1993; Chun-Heung & French, 1997).The knowledge learned in classrooms is not sufficient for students to become competent nurses who meet the expectations of the healthcare workforce(Lyckhage & Pennbrant, 2014; Williams, 2010). Practice in clinical environments, therefore, offers nursing students the chance to integrate knowledge and theory from the classroom, to use it to inform clinical decisions, and to connect it with the practical skills necessary to provide care in the clinical world(Gaberson & Oermann, 2007; Williams,