Dissertation (MSc. Nursing and education)Nursing student’s clinical competence including psychomotor skills, attitude, values, and beliefs of professional practices depend on the quality of clinical instruction given by their preceptors in clinical settings. The main objective was to assess the Tanzanian clinical instructors’ teaching abilities and attitude towards the clinical teaching and guidance of nurse students at clinical areas. It was a cross-sectional study design with quantitative approach. A total of 277 clinical instructors were sampled and voluntarily participated in this study. Data were obtained through semi-structured questionnaires. The analysis was carried out by the Statistical Product of Social Solution (SPSS) version 20. Findings indicated that none of the clinical instructors reported to pass through any short course of clinical teaching or use a clinical guideline for teaching nurse students at the clinical area (0.0%). Clinical instructors recruited as full-time who Employees could more likely develop appositive attitude towards clinical teaching and guidance of nurse students at clinical areas (AOR = 1.802, p<0.05, CI: 0.977, 3.323) as compared to part-time clinical instructors. Clinical teaching experience (p<0.01) and clinical instructors education level (p<0.01) were also observed to influence positive attitude towards clinical teaching and guidance of nurse students at clinical areas. Nevertheless, being employed as a full-time clinical instructor could enhance clinical teaching abilities (AOR = 2.348, P<0.01, CI: 0.420, 3.863). Moreover, the clinical experience could also influence clinical teaching abilities of clinical instructors (AOR = 1.948, P<0.05, CI: 1.420, 3.863). This can be concluded that full-time employment of clinical instructors is better than part-time in determining the attitude and clinical teaching abilities whereas, the more clinical instructors advance their education level and stay longer at work could predict positive attitude and good clinical teaching abilities of nurse students at the clinical area. There is a need to design, develop and implement clinical instructor courses as well as a clinical guideline which can help produce qualified clinical instructors and thus promote the quality of clinical teaching of nurse students at clinical areas.