Clinical teaching models for nursing practice: a review of literature

Clinical placements provide opportunities for student nurses to learn experientially, thanks to clinical - practical teaching models. For this purpose this review wanted to better investigate the latest methods developed in nursing education to ameliorate the theory practice model in nursing education teaching model.

The review of the literature was performed through a search of nursing specific data bases, including Cinahl, Capsur, Ovid, Cockrane Library, PubMed from January 2010 to September 2012. It included key words, such as: Clinical Model; Nursing Education Model; Nursing Practical Teaching Model; Theory-Practice Model.

A total of 8 articles were found. Of these, only 4 articles were considered for this review because they better analyzed one clinical teaching model in nursing practice. Each article was structured analyzed, by considering the "PICOS" method, with reference to participants, interventions, comparisons, outcomes, and study design.

Four innovative clinical teaching models for nursing practice were considered: the first one was the Problem-Based Leaning method in nursing education; the second one was the Self-Regulated Learning strategy; the third one was the developing nursing students' reflective skills associated as a key component in the perceived coherence between theory and practice; the fourth one was the computer-based clinical simulation.

Each work performed an innovative clinical teaching model for nursing student. Some limitations were highlight, but all the literature revised emphasized the evaluation and feedback from students and the perceptions of their clinical activities is essential.