الفهرس 
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Abstract
Clinical experience is basic for all graduate nurses to be professionally competent. One of the most critical experiences for nursing students is dealing with a variety of patients with different diseases during their clinical practice. Dealing with infected patients may be highly challenging for them. Furthermore, attitudes of nursing students towards dealing with infectious diseases are very important because they may have profound impact on their learning experience whether positively or negatively. Having enough knowledge and proper attitudes towards dealing with infectious diseases are the cornerstones of improving clinical experiences.
The aim of this study:
The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between the technical nursing students’ attitudes toward dealing with infectious diseases and their clinical experiences.
Research question:
What is the relationship between the technical nursing students’ attitudes toward dealing with infectious diseases and their clinical experiences?
Research design:
A descriptive research design was used in this study.
Settings:
This study was carried out at Kabbary Technical Institute of Nursing, Alexandria.
Subjects:
The subjects of this study included all nursing students enrolled in the second, third and fourth year of Kabbary Technical Institute of Nursing during the first semester of the academic year 2016-2017. The first year students’ were excluded from the study because they do not undergo clinical practice. The total number of students were 180 students ;60 students were enrolled in each previously selected academic year.
Tools:
Two tools were used by the researcher to collect the data of the study.
Tool I: Technical Nursing Students’ Infectious Diseases Attitudes Scale.
This scale was developed by Joukor et al. (2012) (25) and it was adapted by the researcher to assess the technical nursing students’ attitudes toward dealing with infectious diseases. It included three parts:
Part 1: Academic characteristics:
This part included data such as; students’ age, academic year, reasons for joining the institute of nursing, and training days /week.
Part 2: Knowledge of technical nursing students’ about infectious diseases.
This part included 10 questions to assess the nursing students’ knowledge about infectious diseases such as causes of infectious diseases, routes of transmission, safety precautions and measures used to protect themselves during dealing with infectious diseases.
The scoring system of this part consisted of three levels:
Less than 50% indicates low level of knowledge.
from 50 %< 75% indicates moderate level of knowledge.
More than 75% indicates high level of knowledge.
Part 3: Attitudes of technical nursing students’ regarding dealing with infectious diseases.
This part was used to assess the technical nursing students’ attitudes toward dealing with infectious diseases. It included 17 statements related to their worries about acquiring infectious disease and how they deal with it. It was measured by a four point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree (4) to strongly disagree (1).
The scoring system
Students who got scores ranging from 43-68 were considered having positive attitudes toward infectious diseases, while negative attitudes were considered from 17-42 scores.
Tool II: Technical Nursing Students’ opinions about their Clinical Experiences Toward Dealing with Infectious Diseases.
This tool was developed by the researcher after thorough reviewing of related literature (8, 9, 11, 24) to determine the technical nursing students’ opinions about their clinical experiences toward dealing with infectious diseases. It included 31 items distributed into three dimensions as follows:
1. Technical nursing students’ opinions about their clinical experiences toward dealing with infectious diseases included 17 statements.
2. Technical nursing students’ opinions about role of nursing teacher toward dealing with infectious diseases included 10 statements related to the clinical teachers.
3. Technical nursing students’ opinions about dealing of health team members toward infectious diseases included 4 statements.
It was measured on a four point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree (4) to strongly disagree (1).
The scoring system of this tool consisted of two levels:
Satisfactory clinical experience ranged from 75-124 scores.
Unsatisfactory clinical experience ranged from 31-74 scores.
Method
11. An official permission to conduct the study was obtained from the manager of the Technical Institute of Nursing after explaining the purpose of the study.
12. Tool one was adapted by the researcher, and translated into Arabic.
13. Tool two was developed by the researcher after reviewing related literature.
14. Tools, content validity was tested by 5 experts in the field of the study and the necessary modifications were done accordingly.
15. The reliability of the tools was tested using Cronbach Alpha test. Tools were reliable and the coefficient value for tool I was 0 .869 and for Tool II it was 0 .875.
16. A pilot study was carried out on 18 nursing students representing 10 % of the total sample, they were chosen from Dar Esmail School, and they were excluded from the actual study, to test the feasibility of the study as well as ascertain the clarity and applicability of the tool.
17. Each class was divided into six groups 10 students per each group; then two tools were distributed to them at the institute after class hours according to their schedule, and each student filled them within 30 minutes on their own under the supervision of the researcher and then the tools were collected.
18. Data were collected during the first semester of the academic year 2016-2017 through a period of three weeks from of 6-10-2016 till 27-10-2016
Results:
The main results revealed from this study were:
According to nursing students’ level of knowledge about infectious diseases, it was noticed that about two- thirds of students (61%) had low level of knowledge about infectious diseases, whereas nearly one-fourth of them (24%) had a high level of knowledge.
Regarding technical nursing students’ attitudes toward dealing with infectious diseases, it was noticed that more than two-thirds of students (67.8%) had negative attitude regarding dealing with infectious diseases, while only less than one-third of them (32.2%) had positive attitude regarding it, with a mean score and standard deviation of (48.3 ± 4.5).
According to technical nursing students, opinions about their clinical experiences toward dealing with infectious diseases, it was noticed that two- thirds of them )63.3 ( were unsatisfied about their clinical experiences regarding infectious diseases.
Results related to correlation between nursing students knowledge, attitudes, and clinical experience of technical nursing students regarding dealing with infectious diseases revealed strong positive statistically significant correlations between the students’ knowledge, attitudes and clinical experience.
Results related to correlation between personal and academic characteristics of technical nursing students and their knowledge, attitude and their clinical experience about infectious diseases revealed a highly a statistically significant difference between personal and academic characteristics of nursing students and their knowledge about infectious diseases, in relation to age, academic year, and the number of training days per week.
Conclusion:
It can be concluded from the current study that there is a positive strong relationship between technical nursing students’ attitudes toward dealing with infectious diseases and their clinical experiences. Their negative attitude toward dealing with infectious diseases decreased their clinical experiences and made them unsatisfied with it. Moreover, their negative attitude was due to lack of knowledge about causes and mode of transmission of infectious diseases as well as lack of commitment to infection control principles.
Based on the current results, the following recommendations are suggested:
Recommendations for the institute administration:-
• Include infection control policies in the curriculum of the institute from the first academic year of the students.
• Develop a series of workshops to clinical educators about dealing with infectious diseases to raise their awareness about infection control.
• Establish communication channels between the institute staff and hospital administrators to achieve clinical training objectives.
• Use role-play as a clinical teaching method to change negative attitude of students toward dealing with infected patients.
• Increase students’ knowledge by lectures and assignments about modes of transmission of infectious diseases and importance of commitment to infection control principles
Recommendations for hospital administration:
• Develop workshops to all nurses in the hospital about dealing with infectious diseases to help them act as role models for students during their training.
• Infection control measures should be applied as well universal precaution and how to prevent transmission of infectious diseases.
• Infection control committee should be firm in punishing nurses who ignore or violate applying infection control measures.
• Disseminate infection control guidelines that contain the latest universal precautions of dealing with infectious diseases to all hospital administrators.
Recommendations for further studies
• Replicate the study on another population and a larger sample.
• Study the attitudes of health care workers toward patients with infectious disease and their effect on their clinical experiences.
• Study the attitudes of the clinical instructors toward dealing with infectious diseases.