The Effect of Applying Portfolio on the Level of Learning among Nursing Students in Clerkship of Psychiatry Ward

Background: due to unpredictability of events in psychiatry environment and replacement of routine clinical experiences with some assignments such as therapeutic communication with patients, clinical training in such environments has been associated with many problems which require continuous review and evaluation. the purpose of the present research was to determine the effect of applying portfolio on the level of learning among nursing students in clerkship of psychiatry ward. methods: it was a semi-experimental study on 60 nursing students of the 4th semester who were passing clerkship in ibne-sina psychiatry hospital of mashhad (summer, 2014), they have been studied in two groups of portfolio and educational purposes (the usual method of evaluation) non-randomly. before intervention, the educational purposes were matched for both groups. the questionnaire of evaluating the level of learning among nursing students (by teachers and students), and written-functional test were used to obtain data. data has been analyzed by version 11.5 spss software, cosco statistical tests, fisher's exact and independent t-test (p<0.05). results: the participants consisted 48.3% (29 individuals) female and 51.7% (31 individuals) male. the results of independent t-test showed that there was significant difference between the group of portfolio (81.3±9.3) and educational purposes (62.4±4.8) in terms of mean score of learning by teachers and also by the students, and there was significant difference between groups of portfolio (72.7±13.6) and educational purposes (59.1±16.3) (p<0.001). conclusions: according to teachers and students, applying portfolio on nursing students may leads to clinical learning improvement. so, it can be recommended to the nursing teachers to use portfolio in their clinical trainings.