How Does A Clinical TeacherHelp Student Developing Diagnosis?

Abstract

Problem solving and decision making are two main components of clinical reasoning process; developing nursing diagnosis is a part of clinical reasoning process since it finds one solution which is the best solution for patient. Developing nursing diagnosis is second step of nursing process when nurse help patients to solve their nursing problem. However, deciding the nursing diagnosis is not easy thing to do especially for students who join the internship phase for the first time (novice students). The objectives of this study are to know the experiences of the clinical teacher in nursing, especially students’ difficulties during deciding the nursing diagnosis from clinical teacher’s perception, the causes of those obstacles, and how clinical teachers derive the strategies to solve those problems, and implication those strategies for clinical teacher. The data were collected by conducting in-depth interview to three clinical teachers in Nursing Program, Diponegoro University, Semarang, Indonesia. Each interview is conducted for at least 20 minutes for asking several questions such as: the problems are faced by students when they develop the nursing diagnosis, the causes of those problems, the strategies were used by clinical teacher to solve the problems, and the implications for teacher related to the strategies were used. The result shows that there is the same perception between students and teachers about students’ difficulties during developing nursing diagnosis. Students did not have enough self confidence to compose the nursing diagnosis even though they had the data from assessment. The cause of this problem is students got minimum supervision or feedback from clinical teacher. To overcome the problems, clinical teachers used several strategies such as: using CD Rom as teaching material and case method before students join the internship phase while enriching feedback for students and conducting bedside teaching during the leraning process in clinical setting. The last strategy is encouraging students to read as much as they can. The implication for clinical teachers is to enhance their experiences and to improve their quality by joining training and seminars, and conducting research in related topic. Keywords: clinical teachers, nursing students, nursing diagnosis