Mindfulness Skills Intervention for Alleviating Stress Manifestations Among Nursing Students in Ilorin Metropolis, Nigeria

Abstract

The literature has indicated that nursing students are among the healthcare students that experience higher level of stress; which makes it imperative to provide them with relevant skills they can employ to overcome stressful life conditions. This study thus adopted mindfulness skills intervention to alleviate stress manifestations among nursing students in Ilorin metropolis, Kwara State, Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to examine the effect of mindfulness skills training on physical, behavioural and psychological manifestations of stress among the participants. Using a quasi-experimental study of the pre-test, post-test design, three null hypotheses guided the conduct of this study. The population of the study consisted of 234 University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital nursing school students. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 15 participants in the treatment group. An adapted “Stress Questionnaire” (with a Reliability Index of .88) from Sinha et al. (2016) was used for data collection. The data collected were analysed using percentage and paired t-test was used to test the null hypotheses formulated at .05 level of significance. The findings revealed that mindfulness skills intervention reduced the physical (t = 19.17, p < .05); behavioural (t = 11.25, p < .05); and psychological (t = 11.51, p < .05) manifestations of stress among the study participants. Based on these findings, it was concluded that mindfulness skills intervention is not only applicable in clinical setting but can also be applied in an educational environment; hence, a comprehensive knowledge of the process and steps involved in these training becomes imperative for school counsellors to avail themselves with for imparting positive change in clients who are going through stressful situations. Therefore, it was recommended, among others, that professional counsellors should equip nursing students with such skills in order to help them overcome the physical, behavioural and psychological manifestations of stress.