Stress, Coping Strategies and Perceived Faculty Support among Nursing Students in Alexandria

Abstract

Nursing students experience greater stress through their nursing program. This stress is undoubtedly related to the intensity and complexity of nursing program and its effects on their health and wellbeing are compounded. High perceived stress levels and lack of effective coping strategies and faculty support could be a barrier to achieve the challenges of nursing profession. Objective: Assess baccalaureate nursing students' stress level, coping strategies and perceived faculty support and identify stress related factors among them. Setting: The study was carried out at Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University. Subjects: 400 baccalaureate nursing students. Tools: Five tools were used for data collection. The first tool was nursing students’ basic data structured interview schedule to identify data related to students’ personal and socio-demographic characteristics. The second tool was Student Nurse Stress Index (SNSI) to assess the nurse students stress levels. The third tool was Physio- Psycho- Social Response Scale (PPSRS) to describe students' responses to stress during their nursing program. The fourth tool was The Coping Behavior Inventory (CBI) to measure the coping strategies used by nursing students during stress exposure. Finally, the fifth tool was Perceived Faculty Support Scale (PFS) to measure the students' perception of faculty support in their nursing program. Results: Findings of the present study revealed that the majority (91.5%) of the students were stressed and the most common coping strategy used was problem solving (65.3%), while only 3.8% of them perceived low faculty support. Students' stress was related to many personal and extracurricular factors. Conclusion: The study concluded that baccalaureate nursing students experience high levels of stress during their nursing education which affects not only academic performance, but also all aspects of students' health. Recommendations: There should be a collaborative effort among academic staff members to remove unnecessary stressors and provide a supportive learning environment. Regular meeting should be held between students and academic staff members to discuss the possible stressful situations that might happen.