Sources of Nursing Students’ Stress and Coping Behaviors during their Clinical Training

Abstract

Clinical practice is an important aspect of nursing education, where nursing students can learn and develop their psychomotor skills. The practical parts of nursing training programs were more stressful than the academic parts. The purpose to identify the sources of stress during clinical training and to determine the relationship between these stress sources and coping behaviors among nursing students at Arab American University Palestine (AAUP). A cross-sectional study, convenience sample with 131 participants from nursing students. The perceived stress level was low to medium with a mean of 47.2 (SD = 20.5). The most common type of stressors perceived was stress from assignment and workload (M= 1.71). The CBI participants’ coping behavior was moderate (M = 35.34. The most common coping behavior utilized by the participants was transference (M= 2.00), while the avoidance was least frequently utilized (M = 1.72). Also, the study confirmed that avoidance, being optimistic, problem-solving, and transference as coping strategies are positively correlated to the stressors. Students perceived low to moderate levels of stress. Students commonly used transference behavior with least the avoidance from the stressful situation to other things to cope with their stress, and they found these methods to be effective.