Nursing students’ perception and associated factors towards their educational environment in governmental universities of southwest Ethiopia, 2019

Background & Aim: Due to many negative aspects of the educational environment students’ have not well attained their professional demands that affect their perception and qualities of nursing care delivered to the community. The study was aimed to assess nursing students’ perception and associated factors towards their educational environment in governmental universities of Southwest Ethiopia. Methods & Materials: Institution based cross-sectional study was employed on 422 study subjects from April 9 to 23/2019. Proportionally allocated a simple random sampling technique was used to select the participants. The data was collected using a validated self-administered Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) questionnaire and entered by Epi data 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 23 for analysis. Simple and multiple linear regressions were used and a total DREEM mean score, sub scores, and SD were computed.  A P-value < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Overall mean perception of nursing students was 124.76/200 with Standard deviation (SD) of 0.065 which implies that more positive than the negative educational environment. The DREEM subscales mean scores of students’ perception of learning, perception of teachers, academic self-perception, perception of atmospheres and students’ social self-perception were 31.64/48, 25.4/44, 22.52/32, 29.17/48 and 16.08/28 with SD of (0.204,0.098,0.075,0.060 and 0.101) respectively. The multiple linear regressions revealed that there was statistically a significant relationship between students’ perception with study years, support system, learning facilities; and memory, learning motivation, satisfaction, academic status, gender, marital status receptively. Conclusion: Even though nursing students’ perception of their educational environment was more positive than negative, it is not most satisfactory. Thus, to make it more attractive and an excellent university should adopt different strategies.