Nursing students' perceived stress and clinical learning experience.

BACKGROUND

Stressors among nursing students arise from both academic activities and clinical placement. Understanding how nursing students perceive academic and clinical stressors and the clinical learning environment could help develop useful approaches to reducing levels of stress and contribute to the maintenance of a good learning environment. There is a paucity of studies that investigated associations between the clinical learning environment and the stress of nursing students.

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the relationship between the perception of the clinical learning environment and stress in nursing students; to compare the perception of the clinical learning environment and stress in terms of the year and terms of the organization of supervision.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional correlation study SETTINGS: University PARTICIPANTS: The sample consisted of 155 nursing students in the bachelor's degree program. During the four academic years, students of individual years of the bachelor's study program were included in the study after completing all clinical placements in a given academic year.

METHODS

The following instruments were used for the data collection: Clinical Learning Environment, Supervision and Nurse Teacher evaluation scale, Perceived Stress Scale; Physio-Psycho-Social Response Scale and Coping Behaviour Inventory. Correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis using stepwise methods were used to determine the relationships between the variables.

RESULTS

The clinical learning environment is a strong predictor of students' perceptions of stress related to teachers and nursing staff. Types and degrees of stressful events during clinical practice varied between years of study. The experience with supervision was related to the overall perception of the clinical learning environment, but not to the students' physio-psychosocial status, types of stressful events during clinical practice and coping behaviors. Also, the differences in the students' physio-psychosocial status were not significant in terms of individual years of study and method of supervision.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a significant relationship between the clinical learning environment and the perception of academic stress. The attitude of the teacher and the medical staff can thus be important in influencing the level of stress in nursing students.