Facilitating Nursing Students’ Clinical Education Continuity Utilizing Collaborative Critical Friendship Approach: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Background: Persisted clinical changes in response to COVID-19 obliged nursing education faculties to search for the best quality approaches in clinical nursing education. The critical friendship approach is utilized as a mutual peer learning approach aimed to help the nursing students who participated in the study to adequately achieve their curriculum objectives, and meet the policies and procedures inflected in clinical education without any additional staff, time, or cost. This study aimed to evaluate the potential of a new mutual peer learning clinical teaching-learning approach “critical friendship” approach. Methods: the study design was a quasi-posttest-only static–group design, and conducted in dedicated education units - Acute care units in two dedicated education practice placements, four units in each practice placement with 32-bed inpatient. First and second years of associate degree nursing students participated in this study. An innominate self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. Results: The senior and junior students positively evaluated their experiences in participation in the piloted approach. Furthermore, implementing the piloted approach did not affect the policies and procedures of clinical education and the clinical training passed as it was supposed to be without any additional staff, time, or cost. The critical friendship approach made nursing students more self-confident, safe, relaxed, and more committed to the nursing code of ethics with a strong emphasis on privacy to self and others during clinical training. Conclusion: It is essential to be actively engaged in such learning methodologies as the critical friendship approach. To form a higher quality and safer learning environment, further planning based on appropriate systematic evaluation, using larger groups of students and educators, the effect of the critical friendship approach on patient satisfaction and students’ learning outcomes is recommended.