How does your clinical experience affect your future nursing specialty?

Nursing students experience many factors within the program that may or may not steer them into choosing a nursing career path. The study was done to further understand nursing students’ experience and discover what aspects of their clinical experience impacted their decisions in regard to choosing a specialty. Studies by Hood and Copeland (2021), Tehran et al. (2021), Mukan et al. (2021), and Niederitter and colleagues in 2017, all included an emphasis on the importance of the clinical instructor. The clinical instructors had a massive influence on the students both negatively and positively. Nursing students expressed that their positive and negative experiences such as the lack of adequate amount of support, and friendly nurses contribute to their future decisions in nursing. Qualitative studies on nursing student experiences are directed towards staff and the faculty to show what positive and negative factors students experience. It shows what may or may not need to be changed for students to have a much more positive experience in the program (Hood & Copeland, 2021). Poster submission was sponsored by Leisha Vandermey, (Research instructor, Health Science Department) for course NURS 3417 and was presented at the Coquitlam campus on April 9, 2024, for Student Research Days 2024.