Facilitators and barriers of African postgraduate nursing students' adaptation to internship: A qualitative study

Clinical internship is a focused and supervised practice where nursing students have opportunities to master clinical skills and better adapt to the real working environment, promoting the formation of professional practice quality. However, for African postgraduate nursing students who had an internship in China, the factors affecting their adaptation to the internship have not yet been sufficiently explored.

To explore the facilitators and barriers of African postgraduate nursing students' adaptation to an internship.

Qualitative descriptive study.

A comprehensive university with three affiliated hospitals in southern China.

Twelve African postgraduate nursing students who finished a three-month internship in the two-year postgraduate programme.

Participants were recruited using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted between April and December 2021. Data were thematically analysed using the Colaizzi seven-step method.

Three facilitators and four barriers to their adaptation to the internship emerged in the study. Facilitators included the teacher-student interactions, harmonious working atmosphere and positive inner incentives of the students. Barriers to adaptation were language barriers, unsuitable internship arrangements, lack of opportunities to practice clinical skills and disparities in hospital routine works.

The present findings could contribute to the improvement of a more effective clinical training programme. Nursing colleges and teaching hospitals should make more efforts to enhance the current clinical internship programmes. Further support is necessary for international nursing students according to their culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.