Clinical learning in a hospital is a transformation process for students to become professional nurses. Achieving medical-surgical nursing clinical competence, including critical thinking skills and clinical decision-making, is crucial. The scientific approach is a learning method that uses scientific stages to implement the learning process. Therefore, students always try to find out from various sources and references through observing, asking, trying, processing, presenting, concluding, and creating. This is an integrated learning method between cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the scientific approach in improving the clinical competence of nursing students in medical-surgical nursing courses. This study used a quasi-experimental method with the subject of nursing professional education students. The data analysis technique uses the t-test with the help of the SPSS program. The results of clinical studies before and after applying the scientific approach showed differences in the pre and post-test scores, with a p-value of 0.000. The results of this study indicate that the scientific approach can improve students' clinical competence, including the ability to think critically and analyze cases.