Anxiety and its causes among undergraduate nursing students during Covid 19 Pandemic

Abstract

The corona virus disease (COVID 19) had upended medical education. This pandemic had risen the uncertainty over the start of normal routine of studies in medical universities. During this pandemic period educators had to find new alternatives for academic delivery. Various online platforms were used for educating various courses for the students. As COVID 19 is a new disease and was having devastation effect globally its emergence and its spared caused anxiety among students. The exams were postponed due to lockdown and students were under going stress and it further led to anxiety. Nursing education was also most affected by this pandemic. Nursing a practice based profession, apart from the theoretical knowledge they need to acquire clinical expertise. Due to the emergence of COVID 19 pandemic the Undergraduate nursing students had an anxiety of future due to lack of clinical practice. More over students are anxious regarding the course completion, exams, financial constraints of their family and hazards in their working place. This study was aimed at assessing the anxiety and its causes among the Undergraduate Nursing students during COVID 19 Pandemic.: Descriptive survey design was used. A total of 200 Nursing students were selected using convenient quota sampling method data was collected using semi structured questionnaire to assess causes of anxiety and rating scale to access the anxiety. Study results revealed that the 50% of students had mild anxiety, 49.5 % had moderate anxiety and 0.5% had severe anxiety. In the area of technical issues 60% had issues related heavy battery consumption of their devices and reduced storage space. Regarding academic issues 64.5% had issues regarding inability of understand the topic in online classes, 63.5% had concerns regarding the extension of course due to delaying of exam results and 50.5% of them had concerns regarding their skill acquisition since they had only completed 80% of practical requirements. It was found that 88.5% of students faced decreased interaction with teachers due to online classes as a communication issue and 59% of students experienced financial issues due to increase in the expense of PPE kits. Twenty nine percentage of students were having concerns regarding migration difficulties that might come across in their future career. Sixty one percentage of students were having fear of getting infection due to disease transmission. The rapid escalation in corona cases across the globe has created panic among people. Nursing students, being in direct contact with the patients in health care facilities, were always at risk to contact the deadly virus. This anxiety and worry poses a great mental turmoil and impacts the psychological health of the students. The study had generated baseline data with respect to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on causing the anxiety among nursing students. Students across the nursing institutes reported high levels of anxiety. Nurse educators should address such issues of students and use appropriate measures to allay their anxiety