Costs and benefits of nursing clinical education for hospital institutions

The Nursing Degree Course (NDC) internships realization is assumed as a pertinent study problem for the teaching and hospital institutions, in a way to improve the learning processes and the efficiency of management.

To identify the clinical teaching formation costs of nursing students in hospital institutions it was decided to measure through the analysis of a structure indicator the material resources, through a process indicator the human resources on the time spent by nurses provisioning care to patients, and through a results indicator the degree of citizen satisfaction, always having in mind the comparative analysis of hospital costs between the presence and absence of nursing students in Clinical Teachings.

A descriptive-correlational and transversal study was realized on the Hospital, on the year 2011, involving Medicine and Surgery Services, where the Clinical Teachings of the Health School NDC take place.

The research protocol included a "Documental Corpus" with a list of 26 consumed supplies of the year, an observation grid, for the registration of time of direct cares provided by nurses during 159 observations, and a Citizen Satisfaction Facing Nursing Care Scale, in a sample of 115 citizens inpatient in the services.

The inferences show that the presence of students in Clinical Teachings in the hospitals leads to a positive balance of 21.57 € per day and service, with a positive reinforcement associated to the resulting citizens satisfaction facing student rendered cares.