Clinical Decision Making, Problem Solvig and Autonomy for Nursing Students Attending an Internship Training Program: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Internship is a fairly important period of transition from being a student to becoming a nurse. The purpose was to compare and evaluate the self-confidence and anxiety levels of senior students in the process of problem solving, clinical decision making and autonomy who were attending an internship and those of the senior students who did not. In the study, a descriptive, cross-sectional and comparative research design was used. The data were collected from senior students meeting the inclusion criteria from two nursing schools in May and June 2018. In both schools, traditional educational methods were used, yet in one of these schools, an internship program was applied. The present study was carried out with a total of 136 students. Of all these students, 73 of them were nursing students who were taking internship training, while 63 of them were those who did not. For the study, the ethics council, the authors who adapted the scales and the institution where the study was conducted were asked for their written consents, and the verbal consents of the students were taken. The results were evaluated considering the significance level of p<.05. When the students who took internship training were compared with those who did not, the autonomy mean score (84.23±15.54, p=.022) and the anxiety mean score (95.27±25.89, p=.002) were found to be statistically significantly lower for the former group of students. In addition, the students who took internship training had statistically significantly higher levels of self-confidence (124.01±26.41, p=0.007) when compared to those who did not. Lastly, no statistically significant difference was found between the problem solving skills of the students who took internship training and those of the students who did not (p=.061). In order to increase students’ self-confidence in nursing training, to develop problem solving skills and to develop their ability to cope with stress, internship training programs are suggested for senior nursing students. In practice, for the purpose of decreasing the stress levels of nursing students, reflections should be used in nursing training programs. At nursing schools where internship training programs are applied, different educational methods (such as simulation and high fidelity simulators, computer-aided education programs are suggested for the development of students’ problem solving skills.