The meaning of clinical assessment among nursing baccalaureate students: A custom

Abstract

Background: Clinical assessment is a planned, systematic and continuous process that nursing professionals perform in order to obtain and organize the needed information to decide on the appropriate care. However, the conditions which influence on the assessments within the daily practice have not been sufficiently studied.

Objective: To explore the meanings which baccalaureate nursing students attribute to clinical assessment.

Methodology: This is a qualitative, phenomenological, and descriptive study in which four 22 and 24 years old informants of both sexes describe their understandings of clinical assessment. In-depth interviews were carried out, and observations and daily notes were taken. The information was analyzed through the J.W. Apps method. Results: From the students’ narratives, three categories and ten sub-categories related to the meaning of clinical assessment emerged. This study presents one of them – “You become accustomed”, a posture which transcends and remains in the student when making subsequent clinical assessments.

Conclusions: The sense of assessment is mediated by the students´ experiences at the clinical practices where, sometimes, they do not tangibly visualize the corresponding execution, subsequently tending to repeat previously established determinations and “becoming accustomed” to demonstrate automatic responses. The meaning of clinical assessment can be positively promoted by enhancing the professors’ teaching disposition and the students’ reflexive capacity.