Abstract

Objective: Nursing students need to learn and pass the influential course of nursing skills in order to enter to clinical environment. The level of learning of this course will affect their success rate and professional development in future. Methods: This research is a cross-sectional-descriptive study conducted on 245 first-semester nursing students in years 2011-2015. All data, including the score of theoretical and practical courses of nursing principles and skills, GPA of the first and third semesters of high school, and the gender of students were extracted from the students' educational file and recorded. Then, they analyzed using spss software. Results: The majority of participants (57.6% of students) were female. The mean score in the practical course of nursing principles and skills in males was 16.64 ± 2.27 and 15.87 ± 2.25 in females. The mean score in the theoretical course of nursing principles and skills in males was 14.58 ± 2.01 and 14.44 ± 2.04 in females. A significant difference was seen between two genders in the score of practical course of nursing principles and skills (0.009). However, this difference in the theoretical course scores was not significant (0.57). Conclusion: This research suggests that males obtained higher scores in practical courses and females obtained higher results in theoretical courses. It is necessary to consider this difference in the factors of academic achievement.