Key Findings

The key findings from the project included:

• CLES+T is a valid and reliable tool that can be used by tertiary teaching institutions to evaluate the quality of clinical learning environments in community settings.
• The results from CLES+T showed that in community settings, as the duration of student placements increases, students' feeling of connection with the clinical community of practice increases – as do their ratings of the supervisory relationship. However, in hospital settings their perception of the nurse teacher decreased.
• There were no significant differences between first, second or third year students’ perceptions of community clinical learning. However, in hospital settings first year students perceived their nurse teacher to be significantly better than second and third year students, although third year students perceived significantly better supervisory relationships than second year students.
• The research confirms that CLES+T is a useful tool to evaluate students’ perceptions of their clinical learning environment in both hospital and community settings in New Zealand. Operationally, these studies confirm that the CLES+T can be applied to both hospital and community settings.

Key Recommendations

The key recommendations from the project included:

Use the CLES+T | The School of Nursing in Tertiary teaching institutions in New Zealand can use the CLES+T and the four-factor structure reported here as a tool to evaluate the quality of clinical learning environments in community settings.

CLES+T factor structure research | Given this is the first exploratory factor analysis in community settings, further research should be undertaken to confirm the factor structure of the CLES+T in community settings. Also, given the strength of the internal reliability of the CLES+T, it may be possible to further refine the number of items in each factor.

Community clinical placements | Connecting with a community of clinical practice appears to be an important factor in students’ perceptions of community clinical placements that warrants further theoretical and empirical research.

Future research | Future research includes a search for other items that may help to give a more complete representation of the factors that impact on nursing students’ perceptions of community workplace learning environments; research into the relationship between the duration of clinical placements, the amount of nurse teacher input and students’ perceptions of their clinical learning environments.