Stress, Coping Strategies and Perceived Faculty Support among Nursing Students in Alexandria

Nursing students experience greater stress through their nursing program. This stress isundoubtedly related to the intensity and complexity of nursing program and its effects on theirhealth and wellbeing are compounded. High perceived stress levels and lack of effectivecoping strategies and faculty support could be a barrier to achieve the challenges of nursingprofession. Objective: Assess baccalaureate nursing students stress level, coping strategiesand perceived faculty support and identify stress related factors among them. Setting: Thestudy was carried out at Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University. Subjects: 400baccalaureate nursing students. Tools: Five tools were used for data collection. The first toolwas nursing students’ basic data structured interview schedule to identify data related tostudents’ personal and socio-demographic characteristics. The second tool was StudentNurse Stress Index (SNSI) to assess the nurse students stress levels. The third tool wasPhysio- Psycho- Social Response Scale (PPSRS) to describe students responses to stressduring their nursing program. The fourth tool was The Coping Behavior Inventory (CBI) tomeasure the coping strategies used by nursing students during stress exposure. Finally, thefifth tool was Perceived Faculty Support Scale (PFS) to measure the students perception offaculty support in their nursing program. Results: Findings of the present study revealed thatthe majority (91.5%) of the students were stressed and the most common coping strategy usedwas problem solving (65.3%), while only 3.8% of them perceived low faculty support.Students stress was related to many personal and extracurricular factors. Conclusion: Thestudy concluded that baccalaureate nursing students experience high levels of stress duringtheir nursing education which affects not only academic performance, but also all aspects ofstudents health. Recommendations: There should be a collaborative effort among academicstaff members to remove unnecessary stressors and provide a supportive learningenvironment. Regular meeting should be held between students and academic staff membersto discuss the possible stressful situations that might happen.