Clinical Education Environment Assessment Scale

Overview

This study aims to develop and evaluate a questionnaire that measures how health sciences students perceive the clinical environments in which they complete internships or clinical placements. The questionnaire will assess areas such as patient characteristics, supervisor support, working conditions, physical facilities, and learning experiences. Fourth-year health sciences students who have previously completed clinical training will be invited to complete an anonymous questionnaire. Participation is voluntary, and completing the questionnaire will take approximately 10 minutes. No intervention, treatment, image recording, or biological sample collection will be involved. The results may help universities and clinical training institutions identify strengths and areas for improvement in clinical education environments. The developed scale may also support educational quality assurance and accreditation processes.

This cross-sectional scale development study aims to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Clinical Education Environment Assessment Scale for Health Sciences Students. The scale is intended to assess students' perceptions of the quality and suitability of the clinical environments in which they complete internships and clinical placements. Clinical education is an essential component of health sciences education because it enables students to apply theoretical knowledge, develop practical skills, improve clinical decision-making, and gain experience within healthcare teams. Students' learning outcomes and satisfaction may be influenced by several features of the clinical environment, including patient diversity, supervision quality, working conditions, physical facilities, access to equipment, opportunities for active participation, and overall learning experiences. However, existing clinical learning environment instruments are generally developed for specific disciplines and may not fully reflect the needs of students from different health sciences programs. The study will include fourth-year undergraduate students from health sciences programs who have previously participated in clinical practice or internship training. Students who have not completed clinical placements or who provide incomplete questionnaires will be excluded. Participants will be recruited from Hacettepe University Faculty of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation and Lokman Hekim University Faculty of Health Sciences using convenience sampling. The proposed scale is expected to include approximately 31 items covering patient characteristics, supervisor characteristics, working conditions, physical environment and infrastructure, and learning experience. Participants will also provide limited demographic information, including age, sex, department, and clinical placement participation status. Completing the questionnaire is expected to take approximately 10 minutes. The scale development process will include content validity, construct validity, and reliability analyses. Content validity will be assessed through expert review involving academics from relevant health sciences disciplines. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses will be conducted to evaluate the factor structure of the scale. Internal consistency will be assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficients and corrected item-total correlations. Participation will be voluntary and anonymous. No intervention, biological sample collection, image recording, or audio recording will be performed. The findings may contribute to the evaluation and improvement of clinical education environments, support student-centered quality assurance processes, and provide a standardized tool for use in health sciences education and accreditation activities.