Abstract: Objective To investigate nursing interns' self-efficacy of clinical nursing assessment skills and its influencing factors, both at the middle and the final stages of their internship, so to improve the quality of clinical teaching and students' assessment skills. Methods We used convenience sampling to enroll nursing students who completed their internship in Peking Union Medical College Hospital from January 2016 to December 2017. A self-designed questionnaire was introduced to evaluate their self-efficacy of clinical nursing assessment skills in the middle and the final stages of internship. Differences between the two stages were compared, and influencing factors were analyzed. Results Forty-five students (with junior college diploma or above) were included, with a mean age of (22.0±1.1) years. There were 9 males (18.0%), and the mean interning duration were (6.0±1.4) months in the middle stages of internship and (10.2±1.6) months in the final stage. Scores of self-efficacy at admission were similar between the middle and final stages of internship. However, students at the final stage of internship got significantly higher scores both in total and in therapeutic assessment skills than those in the middle internship stage (77.3±7.9 versus 73.5±11.0, P＜0.05; 38.9±5.9 versus 36.2±7.8,P＜0.05).Gender, age and diploma were related to scores of self-efficacy in the mid-final stage of internship (P＜0.05). Conclusions Clinical teaching played a critical role in the education of nursing students. Targeted teaching measures should be taken to promote their ability of training assessment according to the stages of their internship, their gender, age and diploma, so to further improve the quality of clinical training.

Key words: undergraduate nursing interns, nursing assessment, self-efficacy, correlated factor