Nursing students' perceptions of preparation to engage in patient education

- Nursing students want to engage in patient teaching.
- There are select clinical practice areas that are more conducive to patient teaching.
- Educators need to make patient teaching a priority in clinical practice.
- Evaluation strategies in nursing education should reflect patient teaching.
- Nurses need to role model effective patient teaching for students.

Patient teaching is a key component of graduate nursing practice. Nurses sometimes believe that their undergraduate teaching does not prepare them to engage in effective patient teaching. In addition, nursing students often do not use teaching resources when engaging in patient teaching. The aim of this focused ethnographic study was to determine if students in a CBL/PBL based learning undergraduate nursing program engage in patient teaching when they are in the clinical area. Focus groups and shorter individual interviews were used to ensure in-depth data collection. Data saturation was reached with a sample of 28 undergraduate students. Emerging themes included: Whose responsibility? When patient teaching does happen, when patient teaching does not happen and improving the culture of patient teaching in the teaching setting. It was clear that students in this context-based learning nursing teaching program valued and were engaged in patient teaching. However, they did not necessarily feel that they had been taught the skills necessary for engaging in effective patient teaching. They also expressed concern that workplace conditions for nurses were not always conducive to patient teaching.