Comparison of student learning among three teaching methodologies in the pediatric clinical setting

Facilitating effective clinical learning for pediatric nursing students is becoming increasingly challenging and limited in opportunities. Hospital leaders are concerned about the critical thinking and prioritization skills of new graduates and believe that inpatient clinical experiences are the only way to develop these skills. This study sought to compare the effectiveness of three different clinical teaching schedules in preparing nursing students to care for children and their families. Teaching methodology was randomly assigned to various amount of times in acute care inpatient settings. Student knowledge, clinical decision making, and student satisfaction and perception of learning were measured. No statistically significant differences among groups for either knowledge scores or clinical reasoning scores were noted. Student satisfaction results did not reveal differences among groups. Study findings will help educators to better plan clinical experiences and more effectively utilize an array of settings to optimize the clinical learning of pediatric nursing content.