Exploration of nursing students' views on the theory-practice gap in surgical nursing education and its relationship with attitudes towards the profession and evidence-based practice

Nursing education is based on two basic educational processes, namely theoretical education and practice-based education, so that students can gain competence in clinical skills. Theoretical education includes evidence-based scientific knowledge aimed at standardizing nursing practices, while practice-based education involves the implementation of theoretical knowledge and the observation of nursing interventions in clinics (Raines, 2018, Scully, 2011). Since nursing is a practice discipline, theoretical education and practice-based education should be fully integrated with each other. Theoretical education should guide clinical practice by providing a scientific basis, while practice-based education given in clinics should constitute the source of theoretical knowledge (Lisko & O’Dell, 2010). However, this division in traditional nursing education can make it difficult to maintain a balance and consistency between theoretical and practical education. As a result, both newly graduated nurses who have completed the education process and begun their careers and student nurses whose education is still in progress, may encounter a lack of harmony between the practices taught at nursing school and the practices performed in clinics, that is, a discrepancy between theory and practice (Greenway et al., 2019). This is an ongoing problem encountered by members of the nursing profession and is often referred to as the “theory-practice gap” (Zieber & Wojtowicz, 2020). Besides the nursing education model, factors such as system inadequacies, resource constraints, difficulties in the clinical learning environment and acceptance of traditional practices rather than evidence-based practices in clinics can also play a role in the formation of a “gap” and discrepancy between theory and practice (Safazadeh et al., 2018, Salifu et al., 2019).

留言 (0)

沒有登入
gif