A study to assess the academic stress and coping strategies used among the undergraduate nursing students from selected colleges of Pune City

Stress in nursing education is acknowledged as one of the most important issue in the modern world. During nursing education and training, nursing student are frequently exposed to various stressors which are directly or indirectly impaired their learning and performance. A large number of studies on the problem point out the existence of academic stress in the nursing students and reported higher academic and external stress than students in physical therapy, pharmacy, dentistry and medicine.

1) To assess the stress level among the undergraduate students, 2) To identify the causative factors for stress among undergraduate students, 3) To associate the findings with selected demographic variables.

A Non-Experimental Exploratory study was carried out to assess the academic stress and coping strategies used among the undergraduate nursing students from selected colleges of Pune city. Data was collected from 60 undergraduate nursing students by Non-Probability purposive Sampling technique by using Academic Stress Scale. The descriptive and inferential statistics was used for data analysis.

The result of the study revealed that majority of 53.33% of students had moderate stress (99-147), 31.67% of them had slight stress (50-98) and 15% of them had high stress (148-196). Majority of 66.66% of students try to find meaning in the situation. Maximum of 65% of students pray and trust in god.

The present study indicates that the majority of 53.33% of students had moderate level of stress and majority of the students follows coping strategies such as try to find meaning in the situation, pray and trust in god, seek help from family or friends. The findings emphasize a need for planned health teaching to improve knowledge and practice of Undergraduate nursing students. Further research is needed to identify and compare what interventions are effective in supporting students to cope with stress during their undergraduate education.