Stress and Coping Strategies Among Nursing Students

BACKGROUND: Nursing students experience stress as they progress through their programs of study because they must fulfill numerous theoretical and clinical requirements. Stress describes a dynamic relationship between a person and their surroundings. It is a widespread phenomena of contemporary life styles; it has been discovered to have negative health effects and to adversely impair students’ learning, and it is recognized as one of the most significant problems in the contemporary world. AIM/OBJECTIVE: The goal of the current study was to identify the sources of stress among undergraduate nursing students and to explore their coping methods.  DESIGN: a qualitative descriptive methodology. METHOD: 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted individually in the English language by the principal researcher at female nursing college. The initial section of the interview consisted of a document listing the participants’ age and level. Questions derived from theoretical model were used in the interview’s second section to identify the sources of stress among undergraduate nursing students and to explore their coping methods. The qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis based on the Braun and Clarke framework. RESULTS: four global themes were emerged as the following: stressors, stress symptoms, coping strategies, and educational environment. The first 3 themes were derived deductively from the study theoretical model; whereas, the last theme was derived inductively from the data itself. CONCLUSION: management of the stress becomes critical. Coping strategies have been found to be effective in lowering the stress among nursing students.