Clinical Supervision of Nursing Students (Research Proposal Sample)

Clinical Supervision of Nursing Students
Student’s Name
Institution

Abstract
This research proposal entails an important aspect of clinical supervision (CS) of nursing students. However, the proposal is specifically addressing the evaluation of outcomes of clinical supervision of nursing students in a large tertiary hospital in Singapore. Actually, nursing students need strict supervision in order to get the best out of them. However, since nurses deal with a person’s life, any small mistake made will be disastrous. Therefore, scientific knowledge such as philosophy, theory, practice and science has been included in the curriculum to boost the academic education of nurses. In addition, the methods to be used are: self-administered survey questionnaire, sampling and experiments. This research proposal is from a review of 10 articles on clinical supervision and a methodology paper.
Introduction
Through clinical supervision, practicing nursing professionals and students have enhanced their organizational, emotional, clinical and developmental experiences. Therefore, this has increased their accountability, knowledge and skills, and also their reflective practice. Many authors have different versions on the definition of clinical supervision. However, Hyrkas (2005) defined it as a professional-oriented learning alliance between the supervisor and the supervisee, which emphasize professional development in relation to relevant education. In addition, CS participation varies considerably in psychiatric care and large number of staffs may not participate at all (Gonge & Buus, 2011).
Background of the Study
Severinsson (2010) argued that, clinical supervision’s objective is to improve the students’ ability to integrate theory to nursing practice. Clinical supervision (CS) is also used in clinical nursing education to develop knowledge and skills in complex patient care of nursing students for professional development (PD).
Evaluating outcomes of CS in terms of its effectiveness is not only part of professionalism of future to have autonomy, make changes and competence but also accountability employers, patients and society for quality patients care. Quality of CS of nursing students is also of social relevance as nowadays patient and staff safety with high expectations of nursing standards and competence in patient care from public and hospital employers are top priorities. However, previous studies were done to evaluate CS effectiveness in United Kingdom and Australia, but few such studies existed locally. Furthermore, one of my hospital’s strategic goals is to support PD, which leads to retention of nurses. Therefore, revision of CS is needed for continuous improvement of quality of CS of nursing students on clinical attachment.
Problem Statement / Research Purpose
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the outcomes of revised CS of the nursing students on clinical attachment in a large tertiary acute care hospital. However, revised CS includes introducing a standardized CS guide for clinical instructors (CIs) to follow during CS. Therefore, CS guide will include:
a)ways to ensure safety of patient/student and conducive learning environment during CS
b)using the achieve coaching model recommended at my workplace to enhance rapport development skills, deep listening, creative and open questioning, open and honest feedback and use of intuition(Eldrige & Dembkowski, 2004) to enhance PD.
c) use of reflection journals as guidelines to monitor and follow-up of clinical experiences of nursing students.
d) essential principles of giving feedback on clinical performance.
Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the outcomes of revised CS to support PD of nursing students. In addition, supervision facilitates the developing of professionalism (Proctor, 2011). In addition, nursing students’ satisfaction and perceptions of the revised and current CS will be measured and compared to find out whether revised CS. This has helped them to improve their clinical performance as part of their PD and thus improve quality of CS.
There has been a rising concerns due to the inadequacy and ineffectiveness in service delivery in terms of medical practice among the new graduates from University in Singapore and the world at large. Reports from various medical researches show that the medical education system seems to have taken a totally different direction as compared to previous curriculums and therefore there is dire need for certain adjustments, especially on quantitative data (Creswell, 2012).
A section of top medical practitioners feel that the professions’ education system has taken a scientific knowledge basis or direction with little preference to biological understanding of clinical analysis (Severinsson, 2010), practical skills and the proper development of good characters for compassionate and competitive medical practitioners. For the past century, junior clinical officers have relied on their seniors to help them do a proper Clinical Supervision report using qualitative research (Creswell, 2012).
However, there have been developments in the field of medicine and Clinical Supervisors has become an entirely separate position or area of expertise that is very important in ensuring that clients (patients) have been accredited the proper service (Jacobsson & Horstmann, 2005). Organizations such as Consensus Panel have come up with principles of clinical supervision qualitatively (Creswell, 2012). It is necessary to note that Clinical Supervision helps in promoting clients’ healthcare quality (Jacobsson & Horstmann, 2005), it improves the workforce satisfaction, develops professionalism and retention (Jacobsson & Horstmann, 2005). The main goal of all this is to ensure that the services provided to the public are of good standard and uphold the legal mandate and ethical standards of the career (Jacobsson & Horstmann, 2005).
This research will also attempt to analyse a Clinical Supervision (CS) report carried out by a nursing students in a large tertiary hospital in Singapore. The research will study various aspects of the students’ knowledge in clinic supervision and the overall development in his/her medical career and come up with recommendations on changes. These could be applied in the undergraduate program so that the students can come up with more efficient and effective clinical reports that could be adopted in various medical schools in Singapore in order to nurture more all-round skilled medical practitioners. Supervision provides a major opportunity for professional development (Proctor, 2011). In addition, nursing students’ satisfaction and perceptions of the revised and current CS will be measured and compared to find out whether revised CS has helped them to improve their clinical performance as part of their PD and thus improve quality of CS.
Research Questions
What is the nursing students’ satisfaction level with CS by the CIs?
From the nursing students’ perspectives, what are the factors affecting CS?
What are the nursing students’ perceptions of CS rendered by the CIs?
What is nursing students’ satisfaction level with the current CS compared with the revised CS to support their PD?
What are nursing students' perceptions of factors affecting current CS compared with the revised CS to support their PD?
What are nursing students' perceptions of the current CS compared with the revised CS to support their PD?
Objectives
The objectives of the research project are to find out:
Factors affecting clinical supervision effectiveness
Ways to improve CS of nursing students for their professional development (PD) at my work place.
Students’ perception and satisfaction of CS in relation to their learning outcome.
Significance of Study
The Results of study will bring changes to how students can be supervised for better learning outcomes and professional development. Also, patient care will be improved.
Limitations
The research design used may result to threatening of the interval validity in various ways: first, history when participants experience an event (external to treatment), thus affecting their post-test scores. Second, it is possible that post-test differences between groups can be due to characteristic differences between groups rather than to intervention (Kilcullen, 2007). Third, there is also the possibility that the treatment and control groups mix outside of clinical attachment and share ideas, potentially contaminating the results. Besides, as a novice researcher, the researcher may face role conflict. For example, the researcher may be on one hand a nurse educator while at the same time is a nurse.
Literature Review
Severinsson, E and Sand, A (2010) studied on an evaluation of CS and PD of student nurses in Norway. The scales that were used include: Manchester CS Scale (MCSS), the Effect of Supervision Scale (ESS) and the Focus on the Empowerment Supervision Scale (FESS). However, validity and reliability of FESS is questionable as it was developed by the Severinsson based on a literature review and her previous studies which was elaborated.
In addition, Eldrige and Dembkowski (2004) viewed that no pilot study was conducted after instrument was translated. However, focussing on measuring the effectiveness of CS and PD of student nurses by clinical teacher instead of ward nurses would be better. In order to strengthen CS, pedagogical activity should be included in coaching and feedbacks which are crucial to learning outcomes (Cantillon & Sargeant, 2008; Clynes & Raftery, 2008).
Severinsson, E. (2012) study’s aim is to develop, test and verify the Norwegian and Swedish version of the MCSS in an attempt to measure aspect of CS process. However...