Nurse Educators’ Perspective of Clinical Instructor’s Credibility

As the clinical instructor is completely directing, supervising as well as controlling the clinical teaching that preparing highly qualified and competent nurse graduates, how then credible is clinical instructors?? Historically it seems that clinical instructors’ role have received substantial attention. In recent times of ambiguity in education, nurse researchers believed that the multifaceted role of nurse educators should be re-examined. Clinical instructors’ credibility is one of the many multifaceted roles of the clinical nurse educators and it has usually been debated within literature. Furthermore the concept of clinical credibility is ill defined. The main purpose of this study is to explore educational experience of nurse educators concerning the notion of clinical credibility. A descriptive design was employed using questionnaires to collect data. Respondents comprised 134 nurse educators from 19 different nursing schools globally who completed an online questionnaire. The results showed that competence, up to date knowledge, clinical as well as teaching skills, expertise in clinical setting, evidenced based practice and interpersonal communication of instructors are the most important characteristics of credible clinical instructors. The second most important features were found to be hands on care, personality, role modeling and punctuality. These results may assist clinical instructor to maintain their clinical credibility.