Factors influencing the quality of wards as learning environments for student nurses

Abstract

A main aim of the Clinical Learning Project at the Nursing Education Research Unit, Chelsea College, is to provide criteria for the evaluation of hospital wards as learning environments. The project, which is concerned specifically with student nurses, is attempting to identify factors promoting and inhibiting the clinical learning of this group. This paper will present some of the results of the projects’s pilot research. We should emphasise that, although numbers are small in this pilot study, we are now following up certain aspects of this work in a longitudinal study.