The effect of internship on nursing students' attitudes towards their caregiver roles

Abstract

Aim: Care is acknowledged as the core and cornerstone of the nursing profession and its educational curriculum. Clinical instruction is instrumental in fostering the acquisition of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills essential for caregiving. Internship practice, which constitutes a crucial segment of clinical teaching, has a significant place for nursing students to develop positive attitudes towards care. This study aimed to determine whether nursing students’ attitudes changed towards care before and after the internship practice. Materials and Methods: A total of 164 (57.9%) nursing students who were in the fourth year internship practice were included in the study.This research was designed as a single-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental research. “Attitude Scale for Nurses in Caregiving Roles” was used to determine nursing students’ attitudes their care behaviors before and after the internship. The study was carried out between September 2018 and June 2019. Descriptive statistics, Paired Samples Statistics, Post hoc LSD statistical methods were used in data analysis. Results: Scale pretest and posttest mean scores (70.85 and 70.14, respectively) were found to be similar. There was no difference between the scale scores according to the gender variable. Those who love their profession (x̄=80.0, p=0.47), think that internship contributes to vocational training (x̄=80.0, p=0.048) and had high opinions about nurses’ attitudes towards care (x̄=80.0, p=0014) had statistically higher scale scores compared to others. Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, internship practice did not create a difference in students’ attitudes towards care. If care is indeed accepted as the essence of nursing, the sensitivity shown to compassionate emotional behaviors in nursing education should also be transferred to cognitive technical skills.