Abstract

PURPOSE
To evaluate community health nursing practice by nursing students for basic data to improve nursing practice education, and to determine the clinical practice experiences of nursing students at public health centers.
METHOD
According to methodological triangulation, all data was collected from March 2001 to June 2001 through prepared questionnaires with 62 Participants, and in depth interviews with 2 Participants, and content analysis with 8 Participants.
RESULTS
1. Clinical practice content was needed to make up professionally. 2. Clinical practice instructor was satisfied with teaching by community health nursing professor, but not by public health center nurse. 3. Clinical environment was perceived as good. 4. Clinical practice time was perceived suitable, but practice evaluation was given a low grade. 5. Experience of nursing students was grouped into 9 categories and 20 themes. 9 Categories are as follows: change of public health center image, difficulty in the personal relationship, positive personal relationships, doubt about the attitude, doubt about the task, tension, worth, ambivalance of the conference, feeling about the end stage of the clinical practice. Twenty themes are stereotypic of the public health care center: recognition, difficulty between tasks and interrelationships with the clients, decrease of self esteem due to deficiency of trust with the students, exchange of feelings in the relationships, the situation of clients was not considered, feelings were disregarded, not systematic, regarding students as supplementory manpower, independent work but not enough contents, anxiety & fear, self-trust, be skilled in the practice, pragmatic knowledge formation, understanding of the old person, self-study of oneself, live up to the expectation, consider as the job, dissolve the stress and impose burden, feeling the lack regarding active approach in the practice.
CONCLUSION
The students have perceived the need of community health nursing through the clinical practice. Clinical practice of community health nursing requires content supplement, correction of instruction by public center nurses, environmental alteration, evaluation criteria set up. Experience of clinical practice in the public health center was as follows: Getting rid of the stereotype about public health center, nursing students comprehended variety and were worth while to do clinical practice in spite of tension & anxiety and fear. And they thought to be a community nurse someday.