Nursing students' experience of care planning activities in clinical education

This paper summarises a research study inquiring into the experiences of nursing students of their practice of individualised care planning as a learning activity. The survey was conducted in the final stage of the students' education and concerned three groups of students in the years 1990, 1992 and 1993 who were asked to evaluate their main clinical placements in surgical, medical and long-term care wards with regard to care planning activities. The answers to the questions showed a pattern that was persistent over the different health care specialties as well as over the years when the investigation was made. Some of the activities, such as oral reporting and writing progress notes, were done many times by all the students. Other activities, such as writing care plans and discharge notes, were trained only a few times or never. There were very small positive differences over the years, and there were overall lower scores from the students' training in long term care wards. Possible factors affecting the result from an educational and theoretical point of view are discussed.