Educational Stress and Coping Strategies among Undergraduate Nursing Students in Bangladesh

Abstract

Background: Stress is a natural feeling designed help to cope in challenging situations. Nursing training is a stressful process. Coping has been acknowledged as a balancing factor that may help them in keeping psychosocial adaptation throughout stressful conditions. Objective: The aim of this current study is to examine the relationship between educational stress and coping among undergraduate nursing students in Bangladesh. Methods: A descriptive correlational study was used. Simple random sampling was used to recruit 105 undergraduate nursing students at selected two nursing colleges in Bangladesh. They were interviewed using self-administered questionnaires, including a Personal Information Form, Ways of Coping scale (WOC), and Nursing Education Stress Scale (NESS). Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the socio-demographic characteristics and inferential statistics was used to examine the relationship among independents and dependent variable. Results: The results showed that the participants perceived to be at a moderate level of stress. Ways of coping also found to be at a moderate level. There is a significant positive correlation between educational stress and coping ways of the participants. Conclusion: It is recommended that to reduce stress and improve coping among students, nurse educators should find out the most stressful areas and give serious thought to encourage the use of healthy coping strategies to improve the productivity of students in nursing.