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BackgroundNursing education necessitates vigilance for clinical safety, a daunting challenge given the complex interchanges between students, patients and educators. As active learners, students offer a subjective understanding concerning safety in the practice milieu that merits further study. This study describes the viewpoints of senior undergraduate nursing students about compromised safety in the clinical learning environment.MethodsQ methodology was used to systematically elicit multiple viewpoints about unsafe clinical learning from the perspective of senior students enrolled in a baccalaureate nursing program offered at multiple sites in Ontario, Canada. Across two program sites, 59 fourth year students sorted 43 theoretical statement cards, descriptive of unsafe clinical practice. Q-analysis identified similarities and differences among participant viewpoints yielding discrete and consensus perspectives.ResultsA total of six discrete viewpoints and two consensus perspectives were identified. The discrete viewpoints at one site were Endorsement of Uncritical Knowledge Transfer, Non-student Centered Program and Overt Patterns of Unsatisfactory Clinical Performance. In addition, a consensus perspective, labelled Contravening Practices was identified as responsible for compromised clinical safety at this site. At the other site, the discrete viewpoints were Premature and Inappropriate Clinical Progression, Non-patient Centered Practice and Negating Purposeful Interactions for Experiential Learning. There was consensus that Eroding Conventions compromised clinical safety from the perspective of students at this second site.ConclusionsSenior nursing students perceive that deficits in knowledge, patient-centered practice, professional morality and authenticity threaten safety in the clinical learning environment. In an effort to eradicate compromised safety associated with learning in the clinical milieu, students and educators must embody the ontological, epistemological and praxis fundamentals of nursing.

Mentorship has been around for years and has been explored in nursing education in the clinical settings. Despite evidence that indicates that the academic environment is the most common source of stress, little mentorship implementation and investigation has been done in this environment. The purpose of this research is to describe the effects of a mentorship experience on the level of perceived stress, sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and loneliness by first year baccalaureate nursing students. A quasi-experimental design was conducted. Seventy baccalaureate nursing students in the first year of their program (n = 34 in the experimental group; n = 36 in the control group) enrolled in a single baccalaureate nursing program were recruited. Third year mentors were purposefully selected by nursing professors within the program. The Perceived Stress Scale, the College Self-Efficacy Inventory (CSEI)-Revised, Sense of Belonging-Psychological, Sense of Belonging-Antecedents, and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale were used to evaluate the various concepts as these tools were used in previous research with college level students and deemed to be reliable and valid tools for measuring the relevant concepts. The mentorship program was statistically significant in reducing first year nursing students' perceived stress and loneliness. It also appeared to increase their sense of self-efficacy and psychological sense of belonging. The mentorship experience could potentially enhance the student experience as well as aid the academic institution in retention and resource maximization. The focus of this research was on the academic mentoring by peers and is worth further exploration and possible wide-scale integration within nursing education.

Background Practical nursing students are students enrolled in a two-year college practical nursing diploma program. They are responsible for providing safe patient care to the patients they care for. Assessing students' perceptions of their own patient safety competencies can help educators identify gaps in their knowledge and skills and identify, at a curricula level, the concepts and information required to improve the quality of their care. Purpose To explore practical nursing students' confidence in what they are learning about patient safety within their nursing education. Methods This cross-sectional descriptive study used a modified version of the Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey. Results Overall, students expressed the greatest confidence in their abilities to provide care in Clinical Safety topics. More than 75% of the students' feared punishment when making an error and 88% have difficulty questioning other healthcare providers. Less than 30% of students stated that a system-level focus on errors was taught to them in their education programs. Conclusions More investigation is needed to understand what practical nursing students' fear about the provision of safe care. Additional focus on systems aspects of hazard identification and the prevention of errors needs to be present in nursing education programs.

Undergraduate nursing students, as members of the health care team, must uphold patient safety as a professional and moral obligation during their clinical learning experiences. To address this imperative, in a humanistic paradigm, students engage in critical appraisal of self as a developing practitioner. Using Q-methodology, this study describes undergraduate nursing students' subjective understanding of unsafe clinical practices, and results revealed a typology of five groups of unsafe students. The results showed four discrete groups of students at risk for unsafe clinical practices-vulnerable, unprepared, unknowing, and distanced students. Overall, a consensus viewpoint described the presence of the displaced student as the greatest safety risk. Use of this typology as an assessment guide may help students and educators cooperatively create and maintain a culture of safety while developing competent novice nurses.