The skills of coach are an essential element in clinical learning

Students learn about the nursing profession through experience and close association with expert practitioners. It has been found repeatedly that expert nurses as clinical teachers "coach" students to realize their full potential. The steps of coaching have been described here to provide guidelines for clinicians new to the teaching role. The activity of coaching in clinical education is worthy of further investigation. Not only do students develop confidence in psychomotor skills, coaching appears to facilitate scholarship in the clinical setting. Skilled coaches encourage students to form meaningful, coherent theoretical frameworks for the information gathered. Without the support of a coach, students would continue to adhere to familiar views of the world and accept the clinical world as it presents itself without healthy scepticism or the ability to be creative. Cognitive coaching is not a separate activity to psychomotor coaching. Together both strategies offer a unique, and to date a poorly described, method to communicate practice knowledge to the nursing student. The ultimate benefit of coaching is the ability to instill in the student the motivation to improve performance and strive for excellence.