Student--teacher connection in clinical nursing education.
BACKGROUND
The trend toward humanistic nursing education has called for a transformed student-teacher relationship that fosters learning and growth of students and teachers. Although such a relationship has been claimed to form the basis for student-teacher connection and to be a positive influence on students' learning outcomes, there is a paucity of research exploring these claims. Neither the nature of student-teacher connection nor the processes by which it occurs have been described.


OBJECTIVE
A research study was undertaken to explore and describe undergraduate nursing students' experiences of connection within the student-teacher relationship and the effects of student-teacher connection on students' learning experiences in clinical nursing education.


METHODS
The qualitative research approach of interpretive description was chosen for this study. Unstructured interviews and a focus group were used to collect data from eight undergraduate nursing students. Data were analysed using the process of constant comparative analysis, and revealed four interrelated major categories that formed a description of the students' experience of student-teacher connection.


RESULTS
This article presents part of the findings of this study. After describing the nature of student-teacher connection, the discussion focuses on the influence of teachers and other factors on the formation of student-teacher connection. Relevance is given to this discussion by describing the outcomes of connection for students' clinical learning experiences.
Gillespie
Mary
M
Faculty, Critical Care Nursing Specialty, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. mgillesp@bcit.ca
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005181:Faculty, Nursing / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D013338:Students, Nursing