Nursing students often make clinical errors due to their limited clinical experience and their orientation toward errors, revealing their attitude and behavioral tendencies regarding nursing errors. Understanding how self-efficacy, motivation, and a sense of security influence the error orientation of nursing students is important for developing strategies to enhance their error orientation.
This study aimed to explore the relationship between self-efficacy, motivation, and error orientation of nursing students during clinical internships.
This was a cross-sectional study. An electronic questionnaire was distributed to nursing students from 14 September 2023 to 30 September at a comprehensive tertiary A teaching hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan province. The instruments used in this study included the General Information Questionnaire, General Self-efficacy Scale, Achievement Motives Scale, Security Scale, and Error Orientation Scale. Statistical Product and Service Software Automatically (SPSSAU) was used to perform statistical description, mediation analysis, and moderated mediation analyses.
A total of 510 nursing students were included in this study. The motivation for success and failure-escaping fully mediated the relationships between self-efficacy and error orientation of nursing students, with a mediation effect of 0.101 (95% CI: 0.058–0.144). The security of nursing students moderated both the direct effect of this model and the indirect effect of motivation for failure-escaping. When security was high, the self-efficacy of nursing students was positively correlated with their error orientation, with an effect of 0.059 (95% CI: 0.003~0.116). When security was high, the moderation effect was significant, with an effect of −0.012 (95% CI: −0.026~-0.002). However, at low and median levels of security, the mediation effect was non-existent.
The motivation for success and failure escaping play different roles in the paths between self-efficacy and error orientation. Clinical nursing teachers should take measures to enhance the motivation for success but reduce the failure-escaping motivation to improve the error orientation of nursing students. Additionally, it is crucial to pay attention to and improve the sense of security of students during clinical internships.