Abstract:
Background: The clinical learning environment is an essential part of the nursing education
program. To be satisfied, nursing/midwifery students need quality clinical learning environment
to exhibit good practice, demonstrate knowledge, skills and professional attitudes when
interacting with clinical setting‟s staff, patients, supervisors with the support of the ward manager
where clinical placement takes place.
Aim: The aim of the study was to assess the level of satisfaction with the clinical learning
environment among nursing/midwifery students from the University of Rwanda.
Approach and design: The study used a quantitative approach, descriptive cross sectional study
design applied to 280 undergraduate nursing /midwifery students using the CLES+T tool to
collect information with little modification based on agreement between the principal author and
researcher.
Findings: The findings indicated that in overall 162 (58 %) of the students were highly satisfied
with clinical learning environment with 150 (54 %) highly satisfied with ward atmosphere, 162
(58 %) highly satisfied with the leadership of the word manager and 174 (62 %) highly satisfied
with the supervisory relationship with significance association to class level (p- value 0.001) and
the last clinical placement (p- value 0.000). Despite the level of satisfaction, findings showed a no
negligible number of the participants in this research who were dissatisfied with clinical learning
environment in its CLES+T dimension which mean that the system is still having a big room for
improvement.
v
Conclusion:
The main finding in this study indicated moderate nursing/midwifery students' satisfaction with
CLE. However, some participants expressed dissatisfaction which showed that the CLE still have
an area for improvement as shown by none negligible disagreement in the presented results. This
improvement is needed to respond to quality education corresponding to the fourth sustainable
development goal.
