Abstract
The purpose of this study was to clarify the problems that nursing students encountered during nursing clinical practicum, and to discuss their characteristics. A questionnaire was developed for this study, and it included an open-ended question about the problems that nursing students encountered during nursing clinical practicum. The questionnaires were delivered to 2,291 nursing students. Out of the 717 (31.3%) responses returned, 335 valid responses were evaluated by qualitative analysis of nursing education based on Berelson's content analysis method. As a result, 37 problems that nursing students encountered during nursing clinical practicum emerged, e.g., a) Difficulty in applying the nursing process to satisfy the client's needs due to knowledge shortage and low degree of use, b) Loss of self-confidence because ability as a nursing student is insufficient or lacking, and c) Giving up or disliking interaction with nurses who provided inappropriate educational support. The agreement rates calculated by the formula of Scott, W. A. were over 90%; therefore, the reliability of these 37 categories was verified. Considering these problems based on the literature, six characteristics were found. The result of this study enables the students to understand the problems that they encountered during nursing clinical practicum, and may be helpful for discovering the means for solving the problems.
