Student Perceptions of Trust in the Nursing Education Environment

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore the needs of students and the view of educators regarding trusting relationships and trust in the teaching and learning environment of nursing education and to identify strategies to make recommendations in order to develop a model of trust for the nursing education environment.

Methods: The research design was a qualitative, grounded theory design, which followed a systematic approach to data collection and analysis to discover the value of trust in the nursing education environment and to develop a model that would guide the establishment of trust in teaching and learning. 

The target population in this research consisted of two groups, namely educators and students at accredited nursing educations institutions (NEI). The criteria for inclusion were educators who were registered with the South African Nursing Council as professional nurses with a nursing education qualification, and working at a NEI, and students in their third and fourth study years. These NEI’s are situated in urban, semi-rural and rural areas. Three public-funded NEI campuses and one university in one of the nine provinces of South Africa were included. Convenience and purposive sampling was used until data saturation was reached. Focus group interviews were conducted with 64 students and in-depth unstructured individual interviews were conducted with 14 educators. The three stages of Charmaz (2014), namely initial coding, focus coding and theoretical coding were used for the analysis until data saturation.

Results: For the purpose of this presentation the findings related to the students will be discussed. Student perception of trust in the nursing education environment centred on expected characteristics of educators. These expectations of educators contributed to a conducive theoretic and clinical learning environment. In the conducive teaching and learning environment, effective support and accompaniment provide optimum learning opportunities with the maintaining of standards.

Conclusion:

The perceptions of students regarding trust and trusting relationships in the nursing education environment are based on the expectations of educators and a conducive theoretical and clinical teaching and learning environment. Perceptions of trusting experiences can contribute to the self-trust, self-confidence, motivation and better performances of students.