Clinical competencies in nursing education provide the foundation for the development of
competencies in nursing practice. Literature pertaining to clinical competencies in
psychiatricmental health nursing is extremely sparse. The purpose of this study was to
explore nurses' perceptions ofunder-graduate students' critical clinical com-petencies. A
purposive sample of 18 nurses with experience in psychiatric care and nursing education
complet-ed a 198-item survey, which included eight criterion-referenced critical clinicał …