Improving learning in the clinical nursing environment: perceptions of senior Australian bachelor of nursing students

Learning in the clinical environment has traditionally formed an integral part of nursing education programs in Australia. In tertiary-based nursing courses today, students can spend equal or more hours learning in the clinical workplace as they do in their classroom-based studies. Developing ways to improve teaching and learning in the clinical environment can help to develop a more positive workplace culture, which in turn, has been identified as producing more effective learning outcomes for students. This quantitative study used the Clinical Learning Environment Inventory (CLEI) questionnaire (Chan, 2002) as a platform for data collection to investigate Avondale College’s (an Australian tertiary education institution) senior Bachelor of Nursing (BN) students’ perceptions of their clinical learning environment. It was highlighted that even though the students perceived that their clinical experiences were generally positive, they indicated that there was still room for improvement. With respect to the five domains of the clinical environment identified by the CLEI (personalisation, student involvement, teacher innovation, task orientation and individualisation), the students ide