Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on the mental health of people around the world, and it increased the level of fear of infection and anxiety about the consequences of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We examined the relationship between the level of anxiety among nursing students and their knowledge about COVID-19 vaccination. In addition, we explored the correlations among the level of anxiety, knowledge about vaccination, and the willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19. A total of 790 undergraduate nursing students participated in the study. The results demonstrated that the level of anxiety among the surveyed nursing students was low; 40% of the study participants did not report any anxiety at all, 30% reported mild anxiety, 20% reported moderate anxiety, and 9% reported severe anxiety. At the time of the study, 77.2% of the participants were already vaccinated against COVID-19. Student knowledge about vaccination against COVID-19 was high and anxiety levels were low, with no direct correlation between the knowledge of vaccination and the severity of anxiety.
Highlights
A total of 790 Polish undergraduate nursing students participated in the study
The available analyses of anxiety levels conducted among students at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic differ significantly from the results of our study; the level of anxiety among students was significantly higher at that time—the vast majority of American students (84%) declared feeling anxious or overwhelmed [13], and as many as 13.1% of students from Israel reported severe anxiety [19]
The low levels of anxiety most probably resulted from being vaccinated against COVID-19 as quickly as possible, as well as having good knowledge about vaccination and access to up-to-date knowledge at one’s home university
Summary
It is believed that high levels of stress and anxiety related to the fear of infection, as well as uncertainty about one’s future, are among the most frequently observed symptoms [5,6,7,8]. Increased anxiety among nursing students during the COVID-19 pandemic was often discussed, mostly in the early stage of the pandemic, usually analyzed in relation to student knowledge about the SARS-CoV-2 virus [9,10,11]. The occurrence of increased anxiety has been addressed in many publications in the context of changes in education during the pandemic, the moving of most classes to online [12,13,14,15], the fear of senior year students about graduation [16], and the impact of the pandemic on the professional identity of students [17]. The influence of increased anxiety on the occurrence of abnormal health behaviors and various types of disorders among students, such as eating or sleep disorders [18,19,20], turned out to be an important problem, significantly reducing the quality of student life [9,10,11]
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