SELF-EFFICACY IN CLINICAL SKILLS AND ITS' PREDICTOR FACTORS IN NURSING STUDENTS: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY VIA CLINICAL SKILLS SELF-EFFICACY SCALE, IN IRAN

Abstract

Considering student self-efficacy is useful for evaluating clinical skills. Also, the clinical performance of Internship students is of particular importance, because they need to be able to apply what they have learned during their studies independently in practice. Therefore, this study was conducted with the goal of determination of the self-efficacy in clinical skills and its effective factors among nursing students of Guilan University of Medical Sciences.This research was an analytical cross-sectional study. The research population included internship nursing students of Guilan University of Medical Sciences, and 107 people entered the study using the census method as the research units. Data were collected using a two-part questionnaire; demographic information and self-efficacy in clinical skills. Data were analyzed using Friedman, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman correlation coefficients and linear regression in SPSS 23 software.The results showed that the overall mean score of self-efficacy in clinical skills was  7.90±1.24, with the highest score related to insulin injection (9.50±1.05) and the lowest score related to nutrition through Endoscopic gastrostomy (5.42±3.46). In comparing the total score of self-efficacy in clinical skills according to individual-social variables, a significant relationship was observed between self-efficacy and age (p = 0.007, r = 0.257) as well as self-efficacy and habitat status (p = 0.010).Also, according to academic variables, self-efficacy in clinical skills with variables interested in nursing (p = 0.009), academic semester (p = 0.036), student work experience (p = 0.010), the number of clinical units passed (p = 0.036, r = 0.203) and the duration of student work (p = 0.000, r = 0.333) were related. Student work time (Beta = 0.297) was also introduced as the strongest predictor.In this study, student work time, nursing interest, and habitat status were identified as predictors of self-efficacy in clinical skills, thus increasing the student's presence in the professional clinical setting, will greatly help them develop their self-efficacy in performing clinical skills. It also seems that by increasing students' interest in the nursing field, their self-efficacy is reinforced, which requires the use of new methods and more rigorous planning in nursing education, especially clinical education, given the statistical relevance of skill self-efficacy. And considering the statistical relationship of self-efficacy in clinical skills with residential status, it is better to be more careful about the conditions in the living space of students and to investigate the cause of this relationship.