Background: Shortage of clinical teachers in nursing and absence of hospital nursing staff
role in clinical teaching may lead to incompetent graduates and poor quality patient care. Aim
of study: To assess the perception of nurses about their role in clinical teaching at different
three hospitals in Assiut City. Subjects and methods: A descriptive study design was carried
out in the present study. Data collection was started in 1st March and ended in May 2009.
Setting: This study was carried out at Assiut University Hospital, El-Mabarrah Hospital, and
EL-Shamallah Hospital. The study sample included (300) nurses staff currently assigned to
work in the selected hospitals. Assiut University Hospital (n=175), El-Mabarrah Hospital
(n=75) and EL-Shamallah Hospital (n=50). Tool: Tool used for data collection consisted of
four parts: 1st part related to socio-demographic characteristics of the study sample (age,
gender, marital status, level of education, job position, years of experience, and years working
with nursing students). 2nd part consisted of fifteen variables related to Nurses' clinical
teaching roles scale, Nurses perception scale developed by (Birol 1997). 3rd part related to,
nurses reasons for their performance in clinical care roles, 4th part related to Nurses
recommendation for improved clinical teaching performance. Results: more than three
quarters of nurses working at Assiut University Hospital provided the patient care materials
and equipment which students requested, helped students to adjust to a clinical environment
and regarded them as team members (82.9%, 88.0% respectively). While, all nurses never did
research work with students, and never hold teaching role. Conclusion: The majority of
nurses who participated in the study from the three hospitals reported that lack of training to
hold a clinical teaching behind their poor in performance students' training. While, the
majority of them attributed the level of their clinical teaching performance to being
overloaded with work, slowness in the students' work, and increase in the students' number.
Recommendations: Provision of training courses for nurses on clinical teaching role, cooperation
between nursing educational institutions and hospitals, nursing education
emphasizes more clinical teaching, provide the nurses the chance to participate in the
evaluation of students' performance, allow the nurses to conduct a case study seminar with
students, encourage the students to plan for educating patients with nurses.