STUDENT EVALUATION OF CLINICAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT

Conclusion
The applied learning aspect of nursing education is a critical component of the overall
nursing program as the development of competent nursing practitioners depends to a great
degree upon the quality of the clinical learning environment (Jacka & Lewin, 1986). Research
has demonstrated that student perceptions of the learning environment account for an appreciable
variance in student learning outcomes (Fraser, Williamson, & Tobin, 1987). The wide variety of
clinical sites used for applied learning experiences may provide vastly different qualities of
learning environments for nursing students. Thus, assessment of the quality of these sites is
critical. Yet, to date, there has been a lack of a means to comprehensively evaluate the clinical
learning environment and its impact on student learning. Accurate identification of the factors
influencing student learning in the applied (clinical) environment is necessary, in order for
nursing faculty and administrators to be able to assess the current status of these factors within
the clinical settings used by a nursing program, to implement changes to improve the clinical
learning environment, and to evaluate the benefit of changes that are made.
The SECEE inventory provides an efficient means to begin to assess the quality of the
clinical learning environment through the students’ eyes. The instrument is efficient to
administer and analyze. Students in the sample population responded consistently to the
instrument as a whole and to the scales within the inventory. Test-retest reliability was
sufficiently high, given the additional student clinical experiences between initial and repeat
testing. Data also indicated that students responded differently to the instrument when
evaluating two discrete clinical environments.
The SECEE inventory was demonstrated to detect differences between student sub-
populations. Students responded differently to the instrument according to the institution in
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