Obstetrical staff nurses experiences of clinical learning.
The clinical learning experience is used in nursing programs of study worldwide to prepare nurses for professional practice. This study's purpose was to use Naturalistic Inquiry to understand the experiences of staff nurses in an obstetrical unit with undergraduate nursing students present for clinical learning. A convenience sample of 12 staff nurses, employed on a Family Birth Center, participated in semi-structured interviews. The constant comparative method as modified by Lincoln and Guba was used to analyze data. Five themes related to staff nurses experiences of clinical learning were identified: Giving and Receiving; Advancing Professionally and Personally; Balancing Act; Getting to Know and Working with You; and Past and Present. This research highlights staff nurses' experiences of clinical learning in undergraduate nursing education. Staff nurses exert a powerful, long lasting influence on students. A need exists to prepare and judiciously select nurses to work with students. Clinical agencies and universities can take joint responsibility providing tangible incentives, financial compensation, and recognition to all nurses working with nursing students.
Students' perceptions of field experience in professional development: a comparative study.
The movement of the health care and education professions from an apprenticeship model in the early half of the century to the tertiary education sector has brought an awareness of the key role field experience or practicum plays in professional development. The literature has demonstrated that field experience during teacher education and clinical education is a valuable part of preparation for entry into the teaching and nursing professions. The purpose of this study was to compare and contrast the perceptions of final year students from three distinct undergraduate field experiences. Queensland University of Technology students from adult and workplace education, secondary education, and nursing participated in the study. Data were collected through a series of focus group interviews with groups of five to nine participants across the three discipline areas. Students described their expectations of the practical side of their learning and the learning outcomes that eventuated during the practicum.
The uprising of the marginalised: a socio-economic perspective of the Syrian uprising
More than three years after the outbreak of protests in a number of Arab countries, the role of socio-economic factors in these events is attracting more attention. One of the cases that needs more research is Syria. More than three years into the Syrian uprising, the socio-economic roots of the protest movement that became one of the bloodiest civil conflicts in the history of the Middle East need to be examined. While it has been observed that the Syrian uprising, contrary to some ‘Arab Spring’ countries, has been an uprising of more marginalised social groups with a strong role played by poorer segments in the society, particularly rural and rural-to-urban migrants, the socio-economic explanation for this is still underdeveloped. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of this issue by examining the political and socio-economic compromise that underlined the rule of the Ba’th party in Syria for four decades and unpacking how a combination of internal and external shifts that started in the 1990s and intensified in the 2000s led to the erosion of this compromise, providing the background to the events that began in 2011.