Stress in Baccalaureate Nursing Student

Stress is a phenomenon that everyone experiences in his or her lifetime. Stress can impair both physical and psychological health. Nursing students are no exception to this phenomenon. Nursing students experience both academic stress and clinical stress. Beginning nursing students might experience more clinical stress due to their lack of experience. There have been few studies done to examine what level in a nursing program do nursing students experience the most amount of stress. This study asked the nursing students in a Bachelor of Science program at a medium sized college to complete a perceived stress scale. The perceived stress scale is a ten-question survey. All six levels in this nursing program completed the survey, resulting in 331 surveys completed. Roughly 53 students in each level completed the survey. Everything was done anonymously so no students could be identified. The results demonstrated that nursing students in their first semester of the program experienced the greatest amount of stress with an overall score on the perceived stress scale of 25.7963. While nursing students in their fifth semester experience the least amount of stress with an overall score on the perceived stress scale of 22.9032. Senior nursing students in their sixth semester of nursing score experienced the second greatest amount of stress with an overall score on the perceived stress scale of 25.0189. The average stress score for all six levels was 24.1118. The study also looked at the average score for each level on each individual question.  For example on question one there was a statistically significant difference between senior nursing students and fifth semester nursing students. The study also revealed what level had the highest and lowest ratings of stress for each question. This study of perceived stress in Bachelorette Nursing students showed that there was a difference in the amount of stress between the levels of nursing students. There was also a significant difference between levels on certain questions.