Missed nursing education: Findings from a qualitative study

AIM To understand what nursing education activities are missed in the daily life of nursing programmes, by also identifying antecedents and consequences of missed educational activities. DESIGN A descriptive qualitative study according to the COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative research guidelines. METHODS A purposeful sample of 32 participants with different roles (nurse educators, clinical nurses, students, and administrative personnel) and working in different settings (university, administrative, healthcare service levels) were involved in three focus groups and nine face-to-face interviews from 2019-2020. Both focus groups and face-to-face interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The data that emerged were thematically categorized by induction. FINDINGS Missed Nursing Education reflects those educational activities needed in the process of nursing education that are missed or delayed. Direct educational activities missed include clinical rotations, classroom teaching and students' overall learning experience. Indirect missed educational activities concern continuing professional development of nursing faculty members, nursing discipline development and the organizational processes of the nursing programme. As antecedents, missed nursing education is triggered by factors at the organizational, nursing faculty, and student levels. Consequences have been reported for students, nursing faculty, clinical nurses, and patients. CONCLUSIONS Missed Nursing Education can be considered a multifaceted, multicausal phenomenon, with multitargeted consequences. IMPACT To date, missed nursing care has only been investigated in clinical practice. However, care also permeates the relationship between nurse educators and students. Thus, at the point of 'educational care' delivery, aspects can also be omitted. Educational activities at risk of being missed or delayed affect the quality of nursing education and, in the short- and in the long- terms, also the quality of patient care. Some Missed Nursing Education antecedents can be modified by appropriate strategies that should be addressed by policy, health care and academic institutions.