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Nurses' mental health care competence is vital for addressing the current mental health care crisis' demand for quality in mental health care and services. These challenges also involve educational institutions. In the mental health course of the bachelor's nursing curriculum, nurse educators face multiple tasks and challenges concerning preparing students for their clinical placement. This study aimed to explore and describe nurse educators' pedagogical approaches across three universities. The study applied a qualitative and descriptive design, and data were collected from individual qualitative interviews with 13 experienced nurse educators. A content analysis approach in lines with Graneheim and Lundman was used to analyse the data. The content analysis resulted in one theme and three categories, and each category was characterised by three subcategories. The theme intentionally preparing student nurses for mental health care competence served as an overarching theme describing the educators' overall reflections and descriptions. The three categories were: activating students for the mental health context; caring for students on a personal level; and supporting students in grasping the scope of nursing within the mental health context. These categories described the varieties and complexity of nurse educators' pedagogical approaches addressing student nurses' mental health care competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nursing homes are core clinical placement arenas in nursing education. For a range of reasons, however, they are marginally staffed and face recruiting challenges. These issues threaten the educational quality of the nursing students' clinical placement, and these settings may thus be characterised as a marginal nursing home learning environment. In clinical placements, observing nursing care quality might be critical for nursing students' learning opportunities and for their motivation to pursue a nursing career. Thus, addressing clinical placement challenges in a marginal nursing home learning environment is of crucial importance to secure educational quality, future recruitment and quality in nursing care. Aim: To explore and describe final-year nursing students' situated learning experiences in a marginal nursing home learning environment. Methods: An exploratory-descriptive qualitative design (EDQ) using individual interviews for data collection. Eight third-year nursing students were individually interviewed by two researchers following their clinical placement in a marginal nursing home. Data were analysed using a thematic data analysis approach. Results: Four main themes emerged from the data analysis: the importance of being invited into the working community; the importance of being offered predictability in situated learning; the importance of being involved in professional dialogues; and the importance of being assigned co-responsibility combined with supportive mentoring. Conclusion: Findings reveal that having their clinical placement in a marginal nursing home learning environment offered students a range of learning and mentoring opportunities as well as mixed experiences and some challenges. Implications for practice and education: The marginal nursing home context as a learning environment challenges both the clinical and academic institutions to improve their professional collaboration. At a policy level, standards need to be set for both educational and nursing care quality in nursing homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primary learning outcome for nursing students is to achieve the professional competence necessary to provide safe and high-quality care in complex and specialized health services. Simulation-based education (SBE) and clinical placement are two educational settings in which nursing students' professional competence can be facilitated as a learning outcome. The study objectives were to investigate changes in nursing students' self-reported professional competence in SBE and clinical placement and the transfer of this competence from SBE to clinical placement. We also aimed to investigate which competence areas were highest and lowest rated. A quantitative longitudinal survey design was applied. The study took place from May 2019 to January 2020 in a simulation center at a Norwegian university and clinical placement in hospital units. Bachelor nursing students (N = 38) in their second and third year of a four-year part-time Norwegian nursing bachelor's degree program. The Nurse Professional Scale Short Form (NPC Scale-SF) consisting of six competence areas was used to measure nursing students' self-reported professional competence across four time points. Paired sample t -test and descriptive statistics were used to analyse data. For changes in the longitudinal perspective, students' self-reported professional competence increased significantly. In the transfer perspective, from SBE to clinical placement, four competence areas declined significantly. Value-based nursing care were scored highest, whilst Development, leadership, and organization of nursing care were scored lowest score at all time-points. Findings indicate that nursing students' self-reported professional competence increased in the longitudinal perspective. Supporting students in transfer of professional competence should be addressed in SBE and clinical placement, whilst nursing education should be strengthened concerning development, leadership, and organization of nursing care. • Professional competence is a primary learning outcome in nursing education. • Students' self-reported competence increased longitudinally. • Students' self-reported competence declined from simulation to practice. • Students need support to transfer competence from simulation to practice. • Competence in leadership and organization of nursing care should be strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this metasynthesis was to identify, analyze and synthesize the qualitative findings from original research studies addressing student nurses' experiences with a peer mentoring program in their clinical placements. Students' positive experiences from clinical placement studies, are often associated with quality of clinical mentoring and learning environments. However, nurse mentors struggle to find sufficient time for mentoring student nurses. Establishing a peer mentoring program, may provide additional mentoring and strengthen clinical placement as learning environment. A peer mentoring program entails, that senior student nurses at one level act as a supportive mentor and serve as role models for fellow novice student nurses at a lower level. A flexible descriptive design was applied for this metasynthesis. By using the same search strategy, systematic searches were made in the following electronic databases: CINAHL, MEDLINE OVID, Embase, ERIC, Scopus, Oria and SveMed+. Ten articles met the eligibility criteria, reporting findings from altogether 203 student mentors and 446 student mentees. Extracted information (data) from the articles were analyzed in lines with Graneheim & Lundmans' five phases of thematic analysis of data. The analysis resulted in two overarching themes characterizing students' experiences. Student mentors experienced that participating in peer mentoring had been Strengthening the road to becoming a professional nurse. Student mentees experienced that participating in peer mentoring had been Strengthening the studying and learner role in clinical placement. The themes covering student mentors experience were : Understanding and integrating nursing competence; Realizing the need to be mentored and supported as mentors; Understanding the content and complexity of clinical mentoring. The themes covering student mentees experience were : Reaching further for clinical competence and self-confidence; Taking advantage of mentoring and learning situations; Understanding the importance of learning conditions and their own learning responsibility. All themes were further characterized with sub-themes. The findings from this metasynthesis are in general positive for both student mentors and mentees and both student groups experienced to benefit from participating in the peer mentoring program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]