Evaluating clinical placements in Saudi Arabia with the CLES+T scale

Abstract

The clinical learning environment and supervision (CLES) tool has been enhanced with an additional sub-scale for measuring the quality of nurse teacher’s involvement to form the CLES+T scale. It has been widely used in many countries to evaluate clinical placements. Here we report data from Saudi Arabia. The CLES+T was employed to measure satisfaction among student nurses concerning their clinical learning environment. Linear regression was used to determine relationships of various variables to the outcomes of total CLES+T score and those of its subscales. Students were generally satisfied with their placements. For female students the number of visits of the nurse tutor was positively associated with most subscales and with the total score. For males, who had fewer visits of nurse tutor, there was no such association. Nurse tutor visits are positive in terms of clinical placement evaluation by female student nurses. Saudi nursing students are generally similar to students in other international studies in terms of their appraisal of clinical placements.