Comparing the capacity of nurses and nursing students in assessing patient problems during clinical internship: A descriptive comparative study

Objective: No studies were found in the literature which compared the capacity of nurses and nursing students to assess patient problems using the clinical cases followed during internship. Therefore, the aim of this study was to formulate a method for comparing these skills in cases followed during a practical clinical internship. Methods: The sample studied was made up of students of the degree course in nursing during their internship and by community nurses, both trained in using assessment. Each student identified a patient and carried out an assessment of the problems according to the functional patterns of M. Gordon; the nurses also simultaneously carried out the same activity without comparing their work with that of the students. A method was formulated for evaluating the correctness of the two evaluations. Results: The results relative to the assessment showed a percentage of correctness of 85.77% for the students and 91.28% for the nurses with a statistically significant difference ( p = .027). Conclusions: The results obtained demonstrated that the students in the last year of their degree course in nursing had developed a good capacity of assessment during their internship in clinical practice in the community in line with the capacity of the nurses who taught them.