An evaluation of four student placements in psychiatric nursing

A sample of senior baccalaureate students enrolled in a psychiatric nursing course was tested before and after four alternative clinical placements to measure student satisfaction. While overall satisfaction with clinical placements was relatively high for this sample and not significantly different among groups, differences were noted when satisfaction was examined for different aspects of clinical learning. In general, traditional inpatient placement settings for psychiatric nursing may be deficient in providing students with substantive learning about substance abuse and rehabilitation models. Both substance abuse based settings and combining a range of settings through which students rotate appear deficient in providing adequate learning about mental illness. Perhaps most important was the improvement in Group 3's preference scores, suggesting the importance to students of the clinical nurse specialist as a role model.