Clinical Learning Quality Evaluation Index per la valutazione della qualità dell’apprendimento clinico degli studenti infermieri e raccomandazioni di utilizzo : the Clinical Learning Quality Evaluation Index for nursing students and practical recommendation

Summary Introduction. In the last years, among Italian nursing programs, the need to introduce tools evaluating the quality of clinical learning as perceived by nursing students has emerged. Some nursing pro-grams have developed specific tools, while others have adopted tools validated and then translated from other languages. However, limitations of these tools have emerged in their daily use, thus suggesting the need to develop a new tool capable of evaluating the quality of clinical learning as experienced by nursing students. Aim. This paper has the purpose of summarizing (a) the national project aimed at developing and validating a new instrument capable of measuring the clinical learning quality as experienced by nursing students during their rotations; (b) the practical re-commendations of the tool as emerged after one year from implementation. Methods. After having developed a national net-work named SVIAT, ‘Italian Instrument Evaluating the quality of clinical placements”, a validation study has been designed and performed to assess the psychometric properties of the CLEQI, Clinical Learning Quality Evaluation Index. After one year of experience, a set of practical recommendations have been identified. Results. 9607 nursing students attending their nursing education in 27 universities out of 43 (62.8%) participated. The psychometric properties of the new instrument ranged from good to excellent. According to the findings, the tools consists in 22 items and five factors: a) quality of the tutorial strategies, b) learning opportunities; c) safety and nursing care quality; d) self-direct learning; and e) quality of the learning environment. The CLEQI tool should be used followed specific recommendations aimed at including it in the quality evalua- tion systems available in the nursing programmes Discussion. The tool is already used in different universities. Its systematic adoption may support comparison among settings offered by the same program and across different nursing programmes; moreover, the tool may also support evaluating new settings as well as measuring the effects of strategies aimed at improving the quality of clinical learning experience of nursing students.