Effectiveness of internship program as perceived by intern nurses and its relation to their professional role at technical nursing institutes

Abstract

Background:  Nursing internship program is a system of instruction and experience coordinated within an academic setting and leading to the acquisition of the knowledge, skills, and attributes essential to the practice of professional nursing.  Aim: examine the relationship between the effectiveness of the internship program (established via intern nurse's points of view) and intern nurse's professional role at the technical institutes of nursing.  Subjects and Method: Design: A descriptive research design was carried out. Setting: The study was carried out at technical nursing institutes at Damietta and associated hospitals at Damietta governorate . Subjects: All nurses  147 nurse interns from the aforementioned setting who enrolled in the internship program. Tools: Tool I: A structured questionnaire including Part 1: intern nurse personal data. Part 2: intern nurse's evaluation of the internship program, Tool II: Six-dimensions scale of nursing performance.  Results: 90.5% of the nurse interns were female, the mean score of internship environment was 72.0, the internship site supervisor 80.3, while internship learning experience was 78.3, a highly statistically significant relation was revealed between the internship program effectiveness and the professional role. Conclusion: the internship program was efficient in improving nursing intern nurses’ professional role of the intern nurses at technical institutes of nursing, the professional role of the intern nurses was good, and there was a relation between the internship program effectiveness and the intern nurses' professional role.  Recommendations: more emphasis should be given to the feedback on the intern nurses' performance, leadership, mathematical skills required for the profession.