Personal Readiness and Clinical Skills Development: Evidence from Nursing Students in Private Higher Education Institutions
Clinical competence is a crucial outcome of nursing education. Many factors bind the education and the clinical environment, and still more factors develop nursing students’ clinical skills. These factors include the student’s personal readiness. The aim of this study was to describe the phenomenon of personal readiness on the development of nursing students’ clinical skills in the private sector in the Philippines. Specifically, the study viewed personal readiness as self-efficacy, motivation, coping, and emotional resilience. In this study, a quantitative descriptive correlational design was used on a sample of nursing students from private sector nursing schools in Iligan City. A battery of researcher developed, and some published, self-report questionnaires, were used to measure the above factors. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and structural equation modeling were used to describe and analyze the data. Of the factors studied, self-efficacy was the strongest predictor of the development of clinical skills, followed by the emotional resilience, motivation, and coping. Personal readiness showed a positive, significant relationship to clinical competence, confidence, and the accurate execution of procedures and critical thinking. Structural equation modeling showed that personal readiness had a significant influence on the development of clinical skills. Personal readiness had a significant effect on nursing students’ development of clinical skills. Formal education activities that enhance students’ self-efficacy, motivation, coping, and emotional resilience are likely to develop students’ personal readiness for practice and avail the society of competent nurses.