The hospital setting presents a significant clinical learning environment for nursing students (Eick et al., 2012), and it is an essential part of the formal nursing education process (Kaldal et al., 2015). In the clinical learning component, students encounter patients who are in need of nursing care. Knowledge of the nursing students’ experiences during the patient care encounter is valuable to clinical instructors and the teachers at nursing schools when facilitating students before and during the practical training period at a hospital unit (Elcigil and Yildirim, 2007; Higgins, 2004; Strang et al., 2014). Globally, nursing education has changed significantly over the last decade, with greater emphasis on student learning in the clinical environment (Williams, 2014; Wu et al., 2015). Nursing education consists of theoretical and practical training to prepare nursing students to progress into the professional role of a nurse (Moscaritolo, 2009).

۲٫ Background

A practical training period is a limited part of the clinical aspect in the education to be a Bachelor of Nursing (BN), e.g. one to six months at a hospital, psychiatric or primary nursing care. Patient care encounter generates positive and/or negative emotions in nursing students (Muñoz-Pino, 2014). A patient care encounter involves situations that call for applying basic principles of nursing care related to the patients’ physiological and psychological needs (Henderson, 1966; Kitson et al., 2014) or existential issues (Todres and Galvin, 2010). The patient care encounters are an integral part of generating clinical experience. This prepares BN students to be “doing” as well as “knowing” the clinical principles in practice. The clinical training stimulates BN students to use their critical thinking skills for problem solving (Voldbjerg et al., 2016).