Baccalaureate Nursing Students’ Lived Experiences of Theory-Practice Gap (TPG) in a Tertiary Health Institution in Enugu: A Phenomenological Approach

Abstract

IntroductionNursing education is currently facing the challenges of inability of students to apply nursing procedures in clinical setting (Kermansaravi et al, 2015). According to Nadolski et al, (2012) and Saifan et al, (2015), the theoretical aspect of the curriculum of any Department of Nursing provides the basis for understanding the theoretical basis for all procedures, diseases, interpersonal skills and requirements to be a nurse, while the practical part provides nursing students with a mechanism to extend classroom learning into the nursing practice environment thereby promoting 'laying hands-on' experience. But these students in training do not adequately undergo a thorough immersion and scrutiny from these two aspects of the study curriculum before they graduate thereby resulting to theory-practice gap. Osuji and El-Hussein (2016) stated that Theory-Practice Gap (TPG) is a predicament that many researchers have been trying to resolve for several decades in practice disciplines. Fukada (2019) commented that TPG results when the competencies (nursing knowledge,