The benefits and challenges of clinical accompaniment of nursing students: A systematic review

Abstract

The clinical accompaniment of nursing students is crucial in providing quality healthcare. The benefits thereof include the building of confidence, professionalism, and self-esteem in both nursing students and educators equally, which therefore contribute to providing high levels of holistic healthcare to patients. Prior to this study, limited research was available on the benefits of clinical accompaniment for nursing students. As such, identification of the advantages thereof will be helpful in identifying gaps found in the clinical accompaniment of nursing students. The purpose of this study was to determine the best available evidence regarding the benefits and challenges of clinical accompaniment of nursing students. A qualitative systematic literature review was conducted as a design. The seven steps of systematic reviews adopted from the manual of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Deepa et al., 2016:311) were followed. These steps comprise of: (1) the identification of a clear clinical problem, (2) the comprehensive identification of studies and generation of search strategy, (3) the review of study relevance, (4) evaluation of the methodological quality of individual studies included in the review, (5) extraction of data from each study and document, (6) data analysis, and (7) drawing of conclusions. After the first three steps, a sample of 37 studies were obtained and it was eligible for critical appraisal, after which only 21 qualitative studies were finally included, as they met the inclusion criteria, and were retained for data extraction and analysis. Two categories and 10 themes with four sub-themes emerged from the synthesis. The main categories include the benefits of clinical accompaniment and challenges experienced during clinical accompaniment of nursing students, effective clinical supervision, and support to students, positive or negative contribution of the Clinical Learning Environment (CLE) for nursing students, and challenges experienced by nursing students during their stay in the clinical environment. The results show that the review of 21 qualitative articles and sources support the findings of the review. Strategies to identify the benefits and challenges of clinical accompaniment to nursing students emerged in the two themes and sub-themes, from the appraised literature. The review shows that collaboration within departments and clinical learning areas will have positive developmental effects and strengthen the clinical accompaniment of nursing students. Challenges and solutions in nursing education are common within different countries and it is therefore important to create Nursing Education Institutions that is conducive to learning. Therefore, NEIs need more reforms to increase the capacity of nurse educators who will be responsible for further education of future nurses in our country.