Perceived Clinical Competence Among Final-Year Baccalaureate Nursing Students: A Self-Assessment Approach

Clinical competence is an essential quality for nursing graduates, impacting the standard of care and patient outcomes. Gaining insight into how final-year nursing students view their clinical competence can shed light on the effectiveness of training programs and reveal areas that require enhancement. This study aimed to evaluate the perceived clinical competence of 323 final-year baccalaureate nursing students from two purposively selected federal Universities in Nigeria using a descriptive cross-sectional design. A total population sampling approach was used, which included all eligible students who had completed at least 6 months of consolidated clinical experience. Data collection was conducted using a structured questionnaire that included the Clinical Competency Questionnaire (CCQ), which was adapted from Liou and Cheng (2013). The adapted CCQ featured 39 items spread across four subscales, General, Core, Advanced Nursing Skills, and Documentation, utilizing a 5-point Likert scale. The content validity was found to be excellent (S-CVI = 0.94), and the reliability indicated by a Cronbach's Alpha of 0.963 and a Spearman-Brown coefficient of 0.87. Ethical approval was secured from the appropriate ethical review board. Data analysis was performed using SPSS version 23, employing descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations. Relative Importance Index (RII) and its Ranking (R) were used to establish the nursing tasks in which the student has more competence and areas of weakness. Clinical competence was classified as 'high' or 'low' based on an overall mean score threshold of 126. The findings reveal that over half of the nursing students surveyed, specifically 157 out of 306 (51.30%), reported a low level of clinical competence. This study recommends the need for focused efforts to enhance clinical competence among nursing students by improving clinical training components with particular focus on practical skill development, clinical reasoning, decision-making abilities, and frequent self-assessment of clinical skills to ascertain gaps to be developed before graduation.