Clinical training in nursing study programs in Latvia and Europe

As a result of the Bologna Process, European countries have been operating common basic requirements for nursing education (NE) programmes for several years. In 2021, reforms have also taken place in Latvia to ensure the effective development of professionals within higher education, who would become autonomous medical staff with a bachelor (Bch) education. Despite the different approaches of each European Union (EU) Member State to implementation of NE programmes, the unifying element is a scope of clinical training, which under EU legislation is at least half of the total scope of study programme. According to the research, these essential requirements have had a positive impact on the development of NE across Europe. Latvian higher education institutions (HEIs) have taken over the positive experience of Europe and have aligned the scope of clinical training with the requirements of regulatory enactments. A HEI has the right to organise clinical training at its discretion, thereby creating an unequal scope of this training in certain parts of the study programme. Some HEIs implement this process as internships, while others integrate it into study courses, supplementing the theoretical knowledge and practical skills acquired in simulation rooms with the acquisition of competencies in the clinical environment (CE). However, despite the organizational differences, the unifying element of these programmes remains the total scope of studies in the CE. The NE programmes in Europe also differ in the use of the term for clinical training. Notwithstanding the designation of this peculiar study form, it is always implemented in a CE. The presented research aims to look at the essence of clinical studies and the usability of the corresponding terms in a framework of study process in a CE, as well as to analyse the differences in the scope of this study form in Bch programmes in nursing in Latvia and Europe. The document analysis method, examining 17 research papers for their compliance with international regulatory enactments, shows that clinical training, notwithstanding different terminology, is a key component of NE in a high-quality CE. The comparison of Bch’s level nursing studies (NS) at Vilnius University (Lithuania), Riga Stradiņš University (Latvia), Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences (Germany), University of Barcelona (Spain), and Daugavpils University (Latvia) indicates that they generally comply with internationally recognized requirements for the acquisition of the nursing profession.