Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
Condensed learning also increases recall resulting in better pass
rates on RN licensure exam and better application of sciences into
nursing practice.
The purposes of this study were to discover major stressors and
their intensity, determine helpful coping strategies to deal with
stressors, identify unhelpful coping strategies, and design effective
interventions and support systems to help students cope with stress
of accelerated program.
Literature on accelerated nursing students’ stress was lacking.
Baccalaureate student stress has been studied for such factors as
clinical experiences (Admi, 1997), clinical instructors (Oermann,
1998), heavy workload (Mahat, 1998), medication errors (Oermann,
Lukomski, 2001), massive amounts of information (Oermann,
Lukomski, 2001), personal chaos (Shipton, 2002), and
environmental, financial, interpersonal factors (Kirkland, 1998).
The study design was descriptive survey of major stressors and
coping strategies of Accelerated Student Nurses. Subjects consisted
of 137 accelerated nursing students enrolled in six Accelerated BS
Programs, 3 Public, 3 Private. They were in their last 12 weeks of a
12 month Accelerated Program. The tool was a survey that
identified major stressors & their causes, rated the intensity of
stress during the program on a 1-5 scale. The COPE Scales
(Carver, Scheier, & Weintrau, 1989) were used to rate helpfulness
of categories of coping strategies using a rating of 1-5.
Students reported the intensity of stressors during their enrollment
in the accelerated nursing program as
5. Extreme 24 17.5%
4. Extensive 60 43.8%
3. Moderate 45 32.8%
2. Slight 5 3.6%
1. Negligible 2 1.5%
0. None 0
The mean stress intensity was 3.73 extensive.
Most helpful coping strategies were found to be turning to religion
and seeking social support for emotional reasons. Least helpful
coping strategies were denial, behavioral disengagement and
alcohol abuse.
Students offered suggestions for future accelerated students that
focused on organizational skills, building and keeping a social
support network and focusing on the goal.
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