Stress And Stress In Nursing

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Nurse is one of the members of health care team. Nurses play a vital role in providing care to the patients. Nursing includes the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of ill, disabled and dying people (International council of nurses, 2013). Nursing is a service oriented profession but now days the trend in nursing is mainly focusing on earning and rewards. In addition to nursing profession is altered as a stressful working condition.

Nursing students follow a three years diploma in nursing course, conducted by all the College of Nursing in Srilanka. Nursing students are entering into their course as a trainee nurse because they receive salary from the beginning of their study period. Their

Stress is defined in lots of ways by various people. “Stress is simply a reaction to a stimulus that disturbs our physical or mental equilibrium” (Neuman, 2012). “Stress refers to the response you have to extreme pressure, hardship, or pain that either occurs suddenly or builds up over time” (Cherry, 2014). Stress is universal, and stress present in optimum level is safe and also a motivating factor. High level or chronic stress will result with bad health effects and poor performance. Stress not only adversely affects the health, safety, and well-being of nurses at the individual level; it also negatively affects the healthcare organizations (Roberts, 2012). Studies related to nursing concluded that excessive exposure to the psychological stress will produce job stress and it will resulting in short and long term effects (Roberts,

It allows the nursing students to have direct experience with the real world of nursing, to practice the clinical skills, to learn about general nursing routines and to learn about the responsibility of the nurse (Yen, 2012). Clinical settings provide opportunities for students to develop skills, apply scientific principles in providing care, and make clinical judgments in real situations. Beyond that the clinical setting has been found to be stressful for nursing students (Mahat, 1998). Clinical practice can be a stressful condition for nursing students and there is no doubt, it is one of the critical components in nursing (Elliott et al.,