Introduction: Despite being aware of the importance of nurses' role in providing clinical training to nursing students, studies show that sufficient research has not yet been conducted on the experience of clinical nurses who are engaged in training nursing students outside their normal working hours. The present study aim to describe the experience of these nurses who are training outside their routine working hours. Methods: This study was conducted using descriptive-phenomenology method. Twelve nurses was participated in this research. Data were collected using purposive sampling method and face to face interviews based on nurses' real life experience of students' learning in clinical settings through answering open-ended questions. Spiegel burg analysis method was used to analyze the data. Results: The result of data analysis was the derivation of four themes and eight sub-themes. Themes included "nurses as teaching sources", "changes in the balance of doing routine tasks", "professional enthusiasm", and "nurses as students' professional socialization source of inspiration". Sub-themes included "efficient education", "poor education", "support", "interference in the role," "self-efficacy development", "inner satisfaction", "positive imaging" and "being a model". Conclusion: It is necessary that academic centers plan for teaching nurses working on a contractual basis in the field of the evaluation method and various methods of teaching. The findings also suggested the development of individual self-efficacy in clinical nurses who train students.
Keywords: Education; Nurses; Nursing students; Qualitative research.