Faculty Perceptions of Characteristics Needed for Clinical Success at Military Nurse Anesthesia Programs

In this exploratory descriptive study an investigator-developed survey tool was used to describe military clinical faculty's perception of characteristics nurse anesthesia students need for success at clinical training sites. Participants consisted of 29 clinical faculty from the Army, Air Force, and Navy clinical training sites. The survey tool consisted of a quantitative part with 35 characteristics divided into the four major categories: academic knowledge, nursing knowledge, clinical skills, and personal characteristics. Validity and reliability testing was performed on this part of the survey tool. The second part of the survey tool includes seven qualitative questions designed to help obtain a complete list of characteristics needed for success. The literature was sparse regarding predictors of clinical success in post-graduate education. In the study by Hansen and Pozehl (1995) non-nursing grade point average (GPA) was the only significant predictor of clinical GPA. This gap in the literature regarding predicators of clinical success led the investigators to the first step, describe what expert faculty in the specialty thought were the characteristics needed for success. The clinical faculty rated 28 of the 35 characteristics as Essential or Important for clinical success. All four categories had characteristics that were scored high. The highest scores were given to the personal characteristics category and clinical awareness. Qualitative analysis of the seven additional questions further supported the importance of personal characteristics. The surveyed faculty described their perceptions of the characteristics a student needs to be successful in nurse anesthesia training. Knowing what the characteristics are believed to be allows them to be studied to see if they have any statistical predictive ability.Air Force Inst of Tech Wright-Patterson AFB OH is the author of 'Faculty Perceptions of Characteristics Needed for Clinical Success at Military Nurse Anesthesia Programs', published 1998 under ISBN 9781423557456 and ISBN 142355745X.