The role of motivation in the intention of nurse clinical instructors to persevere in their role: A cross-sectional study

Aim: To examine factors related to clinical instructors’ motivation to persevere in their role, such as motivation, benefits and support. Background: Clinical nursing education is mainly based on acquiring hands-on training provided by clinical instructors in various health environments. In recent years the number of nursing students in Israel has increased, resulting in a shortage of clinical instructors. One of the reasons is that many clinical instructors do not persevere in their role for long. Design: A quantitative cross-sectional study. Methods: Participants included 176 licensed clinical instructors. Data were collected between January 2020 and March 2020 using an online questionnaire. The questionnaire included five parts: personal details, job benefits, perceived support, motivation for serving as a clinical instructor (autonomous motivation, controlled motivation and amotivation) and the intention to persevere as a clinical instructor. Results: Findings showed clinical instructors’ intention to persevere in their role was positively associated with the overall score for motivation, perceived support and job benefits and negatively associated with amotivation (defined as a state where people do not intend to perform a particular behavior or do not know why they are performing it). Two mediation models analyses indicated that autonomous motivation fully mediates the relationship between support and the intention to persevere as a clinical instructor and that amotivation partially mediates the relationship between job benefits and the intention to persevere as a clinical instructor. The findings also demonstrated a correlation between the nature of the benefits preferred by clinical instructors and their motivation to persevere in their role. Conclusions: Motivation plays an important role in the intentions of clinical instructors to persevere in their role. Providing clinical instructors with support from various resources and adjusting the benefits offered according to their needs may also raise their motivation to persevere in their role. Moreover, health managers and educators should pay attention to and follow the professional training and guidance processes of new and existing clinical instructors to establish and strengthen their internal motivation so that they continue willingly in their positions.