Budding nurses readiness for clinical practice: the future is now

Abstract

Background: Freshly registered nurses’ experience of conversion from student to skilled professionals calls for making significant adjustments to shifting personal and professional roles at the beginning of their career as a nurse. Nursing education is aimed to help students to become beginning practitioners in the field of nursing. This study was taken up to explore the perception of the outgoing nursing students about their readiness to work in the clinical settings after graduation. On completion of graduation, these budding practitioners are anticipated to adjust in the clinical settings rapidly and be proficient of providing innocuous care for patients with multifaceted care needs. It is expected from graduate nurses to be well equipped for clinical practice, but reality may be different and there could be numerous barriers associated with it.Methods: It was a descriptive cross-sectional survey. A total of 176 outgoing graduate nursing students were selected using total enumerative sampling from different colleges of state of Uttarakhand and were asked to complete a demographic data sheet and self- reported readiness to clinical practice questionnaire.Results: Results have shown that more than half of the outgoing graduate nursing students were not ready for clinical practice. Most of them recognized sleep disturbance, low salary, lack of time and documenting error as barrier for their readiness to clinical practice.Conclusions: The findings of the study show that 63.3% of outgoing graduate nursing students were not ready to work in clinical area which is a matter of concern with the rising healthcare needs and increasing demands of the consumers of health. The results call for a change in the working condition for the nursing staff and a raise in wages worth making them to opt for clinical practice.