The Effect of Clinical Nursing Instructors on Student Self-Efficacy

For nursing students, clinical practicum experiences provide an opportunity to apply concepts learned in class; practice skills learned in lab; and interact with patients, families, and other nurses.  Although students look forward to these experiences, they often feel intimated and anxious about their abilities.  Clinical instructors play an important role in a student’s experience and can either help or hinder student learning and self-efficacy.  Using Bandura’s Social Learning Theory as a foundation, this study examined the relationship between perceived instructor effectiveness and student self-efficacy.  The instruments used were the Nursing Clinical Teacher Effectiveness Inventory (NCTEI) and the Student Self-Efficacy (SSE) questionnaire.  Participants (n= 236) were juniors and seniors from a traditional nursing program with 86% female and 14% male. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation and MANCOVA. Results indicated that four specific teacher characteristics significantly impacted student self-efficacy (p<.05). On these four NCTEI characteristics, high faculty scores showed a direct correlation to high student scores on the SSE; conversely, low scores on the NCTEI were directly correlated to low scores on the SSE.  These four attributes (along with select examples) are: 1) Teaching Ability (explains clearly, encourages active participation, able to elicit underlying reasoning), 2) Interpersonal Relationship (provides support, listens, shows personal interest), 3) Nursing Competence (demonstrates clinical skill and judgment, good communication skills, well read in area of teaching), and 4) Evaluation (suggests ways to improve, gives frequent feedback, corrects without belittling).  As nursing faculty recognize the characteristics of effective clinical teaching, and integrate them into their teaching, student self-efficacy can be increased and student learning enhanced.