The Clinical Instructors' Caring Behavior as Perceived by Nursing Students of Selected Medical Schools in China

This study aimed to investigate nursing students’ perceptions of the clinical instructors’ caring behavior. The researchers tried to examine the role of socio-demographic profile in terms of age, gender, and year level in relation to the respondents’ caring behavior perceptions. This descriptive correlational study used a thirty (30) item questionnaire as the main gathering tool. The said questionnaire was distributed to 72 nursing students who were enrolled at selected medical schools in China for the 2022-2023 academic year. Data results were statistically analysed and interpreted using appropriate statistical tools, including the Percentage-Frequency Distribution Method, the Weighted Mean Formula and the Chi-Square Test. The results showed that the majority of the respondents belonged to the age bracket of 20-25 years (46, 63.9%), most were females (58, 80.6%), and there were more third year (junior) nursing students (29, 40.3%). This suggested that the majority of the nursing students studying at the selected medical schools were females, aged between 20-25 years and there were more junior students compared to sophomores and seniors. Results of the questionnaire revealed that with the average mean score of 2.72 in level 2 (sophomores), 2.96 in level 3 (juniors) and 3.15 in level 4 (seniors), the respondents had rated slightly agree on all the observed indicators of clinical instructors’ caring behavior perceptions. Thus, this depicted that the respondents had positive perceptions of their clinical instructors’ caring behavior. The results of the correlation between the independent and dependent variables pointed out that aside from their year level, which has a p-value of <0.010, no other independent variables were significantly associated with the respondents' perceptions of the caring behavior of their clinical instructors since the p values of their age (0.081) and gender (0.689) did exceed the 0.05 level of significance. Thus, this revealed that only the