Patient satisfaction with the quality of care provided by student nurses at Ndola Teaching Hospital in Ndola, Zambia

Introduction: Patients’ satisfaction with the care provided by student nurses indicates that students are able to meet the patients' needs, which could also be an indicator of the quality of nursing education received by students and quality of care offered by future nurses. Quality of care influences patient satisfaction and also boost the morale of the care givers.Methods: This was a descriptive quantitative cross sectional study done on 100 randomly selected patients from four admission wards at Ndola Teaching Hospital. The data was collected using a validated semi-structured questionnaire and analyzed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 25. A p-value of ≤ .05 was considered statistically significant using Chi square test.Results: The results showed that patients (79%) were dissatisfied with the nursing care provided by student nurses. The cause of dissatisfaction was low quality of care received (48%), lack of student supervision (60%), poor student patient interactions (68%) and level of training (75%). Patient satisfaction had a significant association with availability of supervisors (p = .010), level of training (p = .002), number of students per ward (p = .011) and student interactions (p = .001).Conclusions: Patients are not satisfied with the care provided by student nurses due to poor quality of care provided as students are not guided, and overcrowding in the wards making patients uncomfortable being exposed to a lot of unqualified staff, These findings will help educators to identify areas of improvement in student clinical learning to enhance quality care. Therefore it is recommended that training institutions should strengthen clinical supervision of student nurses by faculty members and senior nurses to enhance the quality of care.