An In-depth Analysis of Nurses’ Perceptions about English language needs of Nursing students for the Design of New Nursing Curricula

Year 2018, Volume: 7 Issue: 3, 105 - 124, 30.09.2018

Gülşah Tercan

Abstract

Designing a new curriculum
requires much attention and effort since it is not an easy task and there are
some specific procedures to follow during the design. One of the procedures,
needs analysis, was conducted in the present study in order to contribute to
the design of new nursing curricula. With this in mind, the study aims at
exploring the perceptions of nurses and hospital administrator related to
English language needs of nursing students in the field after their graduation.
The study was based on the fundamental component of exploring language needs:
Target Situation Analysis. Employing a qualitative and quantitative design, a
questionnaire was administered to 52 nurses and a semi-structured interview was
conducted to a hospital administrators in order to get a clear understanding
related to the perceptions. While the quantitative data collected through a
questionnaire was analyzed by using descriptive statistics, the qualitative
data was examined through content-analysis. The findings of the study showed
that speaking is the most important and needed skill for nurses in the field,
followed by listening, reading and writing skills, respectively. English is
used most in the situations of ‘Administering medications’, ‘Checking
understanding’, ‘Patient admission’, ‘Explaining drug interactions’ and
‘Educating patients’. The most important medical topics were pointed out by the
nurses are that ‘Medical treatments’, ‘Medicines’, ‘Diseases’, ‘Body parts’ and
‘Patient care’. It is hoped that the findings of the current study will
contribute to the design of new curricula.

 

Keywords

Needs Analysis, Target Situation Analysis, curricula

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