Affecting Factors on Stress of Clinical Practice in Nursing Students

간호학생의 임상실습 스트레스 영향요인

Purpose: This descriptive study was done to identify factors that influence stress related to clinical practice for nursing students. Methods: Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from 278 students from two nursing colleges located in G metropolitan city and one nursing college in C region. Results: The factors that most influenced stress for the nursing students during their clinical practice were critical thinking disposition, clinical competence, year, and gender. Especially, the result showed that higher critical thinking disposition and clinical competence correlated with lower stress in clinical practice. Conclusion: The results indicate that improving nursing students' critical thinking ability and clinical competence would help to relieve stress during clinical practice and increase the ability to cope with stress efficiently. The development of a variety of teaching and learning strategies and education in both theoretical and clinical practice education would be necessary to achieve this goal.