Nursing students' perception regarding practical learning and theory-practice gap

The nursing profession contains two main parts, the first is the theoretical part, which reflects the knowledge that is received in the classroom; while the second is the practical part, which focus on the enhancement of the students’ skills in the clinical area. The aim of the present study is not only to evaluate the theoretical learning Gap perceived by Nursing students, but also to evaluate the practical one. The present study represents a descriptive design, includes 300 nursing students enrolled in Nursing College, Taibah university, Saudi Arabia (half of them of age ranging from 18 to 23 years and the other half have previous qualification). The results indicate that the Cronbach’s alpha value ranged from 0.65α to 0.86α, which is acceptable. In addition, the results showed that the instrument is reliable, all the subscales were a statically significant at P≤0.05. It could be concluded that this study supports the need of reconsideration in the practical skills training in nursing education, as well as emphasized to observe gap in the knowledge and the practicing among nursing students.