The Relationship Between Clinical Teaching Models and Perceived Clinical Self-Efficacy and Attitude Toward Team Process

Nurse educators are called to transform the education of nursing students, a process that is paramount to meet the needs of an increasingly complex health care system. The complexity of health care requires graduate nurses who are self-efficacious, yet also function well as full members of a health care team. In response to this call, clinical instruction, an essential component of nursing education, is receiving increased attention. Clinical education is vital, not only to the development of clinical self-efficacy, but also to the integration of future nurses into a health care team. To further this education process, faculty members from academic institutions are forming clinical partnerships with clinical agencies to promote learning in the clinical setting. The dedicated education unit (DEU) clinical teaching model is emerging as an innovative clinical partnership, which promotes skill development, professional growth, clinical self-efficacy, and integration as a team member. In addition, clinical partnerships are forming which utilize some, but not all, of the features of the dedicated education unit clinical teaching model. These blended clinical teaching models are also promoting both clinical self-efficacy and integration as a team member for nursing students. This quasi-experimental study explored the relationship between three clinical teaching models (DEU, traditional, blended) and perceived clinical self-efficacy and attitude toward team process. The convenience sample of 272 entry-level baccalaureate nursing students included 122 students participating in a traditional clinical teaching model control group, 84 students participating in a DEU clinical teaching model treatment group, and 66 students participating in a blended clinical teaching model treatment group. The first dependent variable, perceived clinical self-efficacy, was evaluated by the pretest/posttest scores obtained on the General Self-Efficacy (GSE) scale. The second dependent variable, attitude toward team process, was evaluated by the pretest/posttest scores obtained on the TeamSTEPPS® Teamwork Attitude Questionnaire. All three clinical teaching models resulted in significant increases in perceived clinical self-efficacy (p = .04) and attitude toward team process (p = .003). Students participating in the DEU clinical teaching model (p = .016) and students participating in the blended clinical teaching model (p \u3c .001) had significantly larger increases in perceived clinical self-efficacy compared to students participating in the traditional clinical teaching model. These findings support the use of DEU and blended clinical partnerships as alternatives to the traditional clinical teaching model to promote both clinical self-efficacy and team process among entry-level baccalaureate nursing students