article · BMC Nursing
Clinical training is essential for nursing education, but suboptimal environments can obstruct professional competence and readiness for practice. An exploratory study involving twenty-four final-year nursing students at a tertiary institution in Ghana examined practical learning experiences and coping strategies. Participants engaged in individual interviews and focus group discussions to detail their clinical practicum. The findings highlighted critical workplace hurdles, including poor mentorship, scarce opportunities for hands-on experience, inadequate access to protective equipment, language barriers, and discrepancies between theoretical instruction and clinical reality. These constraints diminished the learners' confidence and self-assessed readiness for healthcare practice. To overcome these difficulties, students relied on self-directed learning and nurtured supportive relationships with clinical staff. Constructive feedback also helped strengthen their professional identity and confidence. Ultimately, clinical spaces serve as both obstacles and formative environments, showing the necessity of stronger mentorship, better resource provision, and psychologically safe supervision during training.
Effective healthcare delivery depends on well-prepared nursing graduates. Understanding the specific obstacles students face in resource-constrained clinical settings helps nursing schools and hospital administrators design better training programmes. Addressing shortages of protective equipment, closing the gap between classroom theory and clinical reality, and enhancing mentorship directly improves student confidence, professional competence, and the overall quality of patient care delivered by new healthcare professionals.
The abstract does not indicate a direct commercial application pathway or product development effort. However, the identified training deficits could inform educational service providers and healthcare administrators designing clinical supervision programmes, mentorship training frameworks, or digital learning aids for resource-limited environments. Any practical implementation of these workplace interventions remains at an early conceptual stage, requiring institutional adoption by nursing colleges and teaching hospitals rather than immediate market deployment.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Clinical practicum is central to nursing education, yet suboptimal Clinical Learning Environments can hinder competence development and readiness for practice. Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa remains limited, particularly on final-year students approaching transition to practice. This study explored final-year nursing students’ experiences of clinical practicum in Ghana and the strategies they use to navigate learning constraints. An exploratory qualitative design was used. Twenty-four final-year nursing students from a Ghanaian tertiary institution were purposively recruited. Data were collected through twelve individual interviews and two focus group discussions, audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using thematic analysis. Reflexivity, collaborative coding, and an audit trail supported rigor. Two themes were generated: challenges in the Clinical Learning Environment and coping strategies. Reported challenges included poor mentorship, limited hands-on opportunities, restricted access to protective equipment, theory–practice gaps, and language barriers. These constraints undermined confidence and perceived readiness. Students demonstrated resilience through self-directed learning and supportive staff relationships, with positive feedback fostering confidence and professional identity. Clinical Learning Environments function as both barriers and formative spaces for learning. Strengthening mentorship, resource availability, and psychologically safe supervision is essential to optimizing students’ transition in resource-limited contexts.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05146-1
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
