Description/Abstract:
Statement of the Project
This study was designed to (1) examine the present structure of the clinical laboratory experience in baccalaureate education for nursing in terms of factors which constitute a laboratory experience in the teaching-learning process; (2) identify the extent to which these significant factors structure the clinical laboratory experience; (3) identify the factors which may need study and/or revision, if the clinical laboratory experience is to serve an educative purpose.
Procedure
The methodology involved a review of literature in the fields of education, educational psychology, and professional education to identify and delineate factors considered essential for effective learning in the laboratory. The following factors were identified as significant: (1) deliberate selection for an educative purpose; (2) utilization as complement of theory; (3) basis in educational objective; (4) evaluation; (5) individualization; (6) learner participation in all aspects of experience; (7) guidance; (8) intellectualization of experience; (9) a spatio-temporal dimension facilitating the educative purpose.
A survey of the clinical laboratory experience in baccalaureate nursing education was conducted on the national level. The significant factors served as a frame of reference for a questionnaire which was sent to a stratified random sample of 266 nursing faculty members in eighty-three programs participating in the study.
Responses from 214 faculty members representing eighty-one baccalaureate nursing programs distributed throughout the United States constitute the research data.
Conclusions
The reported data support the following conclusions:
The clinical laboratory experience is not used as a complement of course content. Accepted as necessary, the laboratory experience has an independent identity in terms of a schedule at a particular agency irrespective of the immediate relationship to course content.
Time and place determine the laboratory experience. The educational value of the clinical laboratory seems rooted in the workday of the agency; the time schedule of the staff and the available learning opportunities influence the direction of the laboratory experience.
The focus of the clinical experience is on nursing activity and not on the educational objective. The learner and the educational objective are submerged in a composite of nursing activities required by what is termed as ôtotal nursing care.ö
The individual learner is not the center of the laboratory experience. Students are viewed as a group in the laboratory; learning experiences and their outcomes are based on a group-approach.
Readiness to begin clinical experiences is assumed. Academic promotion is accepted as an assurance that a student has prerequisite skills to begin laboratory experiences in a particular course.
The evaluation of learning is not an integral part of each laboratory experience. The approach to evaluation is global and removed from the point of the learning experience.
Intellectualization appears to be presumed to take place during the laboratory experience. Discussion, process records, and care plans are relied upon as vehicles of intellectualization; their validity and reliability seem unquestioned.
Summary Statement
Nursing education needs to adopt the laboratory point of view encompassing: (1) identification of the concept of laboratory in the educational process; (2) movement toward greater emphasis upon underlying principles of basic sciences and less upon detail of application; (3) opportunities for students to use the laboratory for the study and analysis of the nursing process; (4) planning and implementation of learning experiences to complement theory; (5) efficient use of the studentsÆ time and the resources of the educational institution; (6) exploration of educational technology and demonstration of its use for purposes of learning in the laboratory; (7) experimentation with ways of using the laboratory in the teaching-learning process.