Addressing the Disconnect: Nursing Education and Practice Challenges

This report investigates the discrepancies between nursing education and practical application, highlighting the challenges faced by newly graduated nurses. It examines the impact of inadequate equipment, insufficient time, poor communication, and a lack of support from senior staff and management on the transition from education to practice. The report identifies key issues such as a lack of self-confidence, insufficient clinical skills, and the need for effective therapeutic relationships. Strategies to bridge this gap include improved collaboration between educational institutions and healthcare facilities, updated information for nurses, and effective communication between educators and clinical staff. The report concludes with recommendations for enhancing nursing education to better prepare students for the realities of clinical practice and improving the support systems available to them in their early careers.

Gaps between nursing education and
nursing practice

Introduction
A registered is the nurses who is graduated
from a nursing institute and met all the
requirement shaped by a nation, state, other
licensing body to receive nursing licence. They
recognise their role in delegating the care
properly and delivering supervision to the new
or junior healthcare professionals when
needed. nursing practice involved advocacy for
patient’s rights (Potter et al., 2016).

Nursing education and nursing
practice
The gaps between the education and
practice means the difference between the
idealized practice and usual practice, the
difference between the learnt general
principles and the problems in interpreting
them to apply in specific situation. There is
different literature documented and debated
the gap between the nursing education and
nursing (Mackey & Bassendowski, 2017).

Gaps between nursing education
and nursing practice
Inadequate equipment, nursing students
being treated as a worker, insufficient time to
accomplish procedure, poor relational
association and communication with health care
staff, poor attitudes of staff towards nursing
student learning, inadequate clinical direction,
and headship style of the ward nurse are
environmental aspects which impact clinical
learning (Mackey & Bassendowski, 2017).

Majority of the nurses reported that they
are often guided by other nurses or managers
to apply their learnt information. This takes
place as the senior nurses are busy during
their shift as they have to deal with many
individuals and perform dissimilar other tasks.
Lack of time is the key problem stated by
many senior nurses (Beauvais et al., 2017).

Other major issues are lack of support
from the management. Most of the healthcare
organisations demands high accuracy from
the newly graduated nurses and this put extra
pressure on them. which results in increased
anxiety, lack of self confidence and inability
their learnt knowledge in nursing practice
(Mackey & Bassendowski, 2017).

Some of the registered nurses stated that
the new nurses prefer to work individually and
avoid working in a team they do not want
extra pressure. However, it is not true for
every student nurse as some them wants to
learn from senior nurses , but because low
information and nursing skills they failed to
learn clinical practices quickly (Salah et al.,
2018).

They are not equipped with the skills
required to perform clinical practices. For
example, some of the nurse are educated
about the developing a therapeutic
relationship with the client which is the main
requirement in every health care organisation
to satisfy the client with services
(Bouchlaghem & Mansouri, 2018).

Strategies to bridge the gap
Nurses desire to use the information they
receive from co-workers during practice,
this preference is a dual-edged sword as
the knowledge gained could be damaged
or misunderstood. The nurse educator can
safeguard that this information is up to
date, reliable, and valid for application at
nursing practice situation (Eraut, 2012).

The management of the academicians and
the medical nurses play a significant role
on the new nurse’s satisfaction from the
medical environment and their learning.
Effective communication amongst the
school and the clinic workforces to
advance education and interventions to
upsurge information sharing should be
strategic (Flood & Robinia, 2014).

Conclusion
In conclusion, after reviewing different
articles it can be concluded that the gap is exist
between the nursing education and nursing
practice due to lack support, lack of skills,
insufficient knowledge, and low self confidence
among nurses. This can bridged with effective
collaboration between nursing institutes and
employers and encouraging nursing student to
learn more skills, and use them in clinical setting.