An Exploratory Study: Reducing Nursing Students Stress Levels Facilitate Perceived Quality of Patient Care

摘要

The aim of this project was to examine if stress levels in Associate Degree (AD) nursing students can affect their perceived quality of care provided to patients. Nursing students experience tremendous amounts of stress especially during their clinical experience. High levels of stress may affect the quality of patient care provided. This project implemented a stress reducing workshop and an instructional deep breathing compact disk (CD) to determine the effects of this intervention upon the stress levels of nursing students and the quality of care provided to patients. Nursing students completed a workshop where recognition of stress producing situations and effective ways to deal with them were discussed. Each student was provided with a CD containing a ten minute instructional deep breathing exercise which they were asked to listen to five times a week for six weeks. Nursing students were asked to complete Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Student Perception of Quality of Patient Care Provided questionnaire prior to and after the implementation of the intervention. The results of the two questionnaires were compared to determine effectiveness of the stress reducing interventions. Using paired t scores, results demonstrated that students’ stress levels were decreased and student’s perception of quality of patient care provided improved after the stress reducing interventions.