STUDENTS VIEWS REGARDING ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE, INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CLINICAL INSTRUCTORS, AT SCHOOL OF NURSING AND MIDWIFERY, ZANJAN UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES

Background and Objective: Clinical instructors play an important role in creating a learning environment for their students to acquire professional skills. This study is aimed to determine students' views on educational performance, interpersonal relationships and personal characteristics of clinical instructors at Zanjan School of Nursing and Midwifery. Materials and Methods: In this cross - sectional study, 332 college students of Zanjan School of Nursing and Midwifery participated. A questionnaire was designed which was approved by EDO members of the faculty. Questions were designed in five categories: general teaching ability, professional competency, student evaluation, interpersonal relationships and personal characteristics.Descriptive statistics, independent t-test, Friedman test, analysis of variance, and SPSS software were used to analyze the data. Results: 82.2% of students described the educational performance of their clinical instructors as “good”. In 80.9% of cases of clinical competence, in the area of Student Evaluation in 76.2% of cases and in 79.7% of cases of interpersonal relationships evaluation results were good. From the students’ perspective clinical instructors' personal characteristics in 75.1% of cases were evaluated as good. The instructors’ scores was 84.9 out of a total of 100 scores and for both males and females the difference was not statistically significant. The total score achieved by clinical professors with Ph.D. degrees was higher than teachers’ with a Master's Degree and B.Sc. Degree. It was also higher among midwifery instructors in comparison with the instructors of other fields and the differences were statistically significant ( p less-than .05 ). The lowest score was for the instructors with 5 -10 years experience and the highest was for the instructors with more than 10 years of experience. Conclusion: Although the practice of instructors in Zanjan School of Nursing and Midwifery has been evaluated as good, but with frequent evaluation of clinical education, monitoring of instructors performance, comparing the current situation with the situation before, strengthening the positive aspects and modifying the weaknesses we can take an effective step to further promote the quality of clinical education.