Effect of Humanistic Care-Integrated Mini-CEX Teachingon Nursing Students’ Clinical Competence:A Quasi-Experimental Study

Background Clinical competence is pivotal for nursing students to succeed in their clinical training and future practice. Traditional education often emphasizes technical skills at the expense of holistic care, humanistic competencies, and core clinical abilities. This study therefore reformed the “Basic Nursing Intensive Training” course by integrating humanistic care with the Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX). This reform aims to investigate its effectiveness in enhancing the clinical competence of nursing students. Methods This study employed a quasi-experimental design conducted between February and June 2025. A total of 193 third-year nursing students from a university were recruited and randomly assigned to either an intervention group (n = 97) or a control group (n = 96). The control group received traditional teaching methods, whereas the intervention group underwent a modified curriculum that integrated humanistic care and the Mini-CEX. Upon completion of the course, a comprehensive evaluation was performed, which included course examinations, Mini-CEX assessments, and measurements of core clinical competencies, humanistic care ability, and self-directed learning ability. Results Following the intervention, the intervention group demonstrated significantly higher scores than the control group in core clinical competencies, humanistic care ability, self-directed learning ability, Mini-CEX evaluations, and the overall course assessment ( P  < .05). Conclusions The integration of humanistic care with the Mini-CEX teaching model effectively enhanced nursing students’ clinical competency, fostering the development of their humanistic literacy, clinical practice skills, and self-directed learning capabilities. The findings confirm the significant positive impact of this educational approach. Trial Registration The study protocol was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Jiangxi Provincial Children's Hospital (Approval No.JXSETYYYXKY20250169 ) Written informed consent was obtained from all participants before the start of the trial.