Abstract
Nursing students often encounter high levels of stress through clinical practice that may cause psychological or emotional problems during their professional life eventually affecting the quality of patient care they provide. The aims of the current study were to identify the level and types of stress perceived by nursing students in their clinical practice and to identify the coping strategies that students used to relieve their stress. A descriptive, cross‐sectional design was used in this study. A total of 200 students who were enrolled in the nursing program were taken as study respondents. Research data were collected using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Coping Behavior Inventory (CBI). Data was analyzed using one‐way ANOVA test, Pearson’s test, and independent sample t‐test on SPSS version 22. Findings indicated that nursing students experienced a high level of stress. The most common coping strategy utilized by the students was problem solving, while avoidance was the least frequently used one. Saudi nursing students experienced stress levels above the mean in clinical training. The most common stressors were related to assignments and workload. The study recommends that clinical curriculum requirements and the workload of nursing students should be reviewed.
Highlights
The nursing program has the desired end of producing skilled and qualified nurses who are capable of utilizing their knowledge and skills in the practice of the profession
Levels of stress among nursing students at the University of Hail are considered above the mean. This result is consistent with other studies [8, 13]. These findings showed that nursing students as they are newly exposed to a highly technological clinical environment combined with the stress of completing new unfamiliar assignments and procedures could have higher stress
The results of this study indicate that clinical instructors and coordinators who have a vital role in the clinical education should be aware of the fact that students who perform practice in a hospital department are at specific risk of stress
Summary
The nursing program has the desired end of producing skilled and qualified nurses who are capable of utilizing their knowledge and skills in the practice of the profession. Student nurses’ clinical training should be appropriately designed for them to develop cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills that are essential for ascending the nursing career path [1]. Most nursing curricula allocate more than half of the nursing students time for clinical exposure using advanced technical instrumentation and perform nursing skills that may cause severe impairment to their patients, increasing their worry of creating errors. They view the clinical area as a very stressful place [2]. Levels of stress are higher, and there are a greater number of sources of stress among nursing professionals with negative consequences for their health [5]
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