Anxiety of nursing students during a clinical rotation in ICU or maternity

Abstract

High levels of anxiety are known to be detrimental to learning. Research has shown that staff nurses assigned to Intensive Care Units (ICU) experience more sources of anxiety than staff nurses in other clinical areas. Nursing students rotating through ICU have the same potential for increased anxiety but no research has examined anxiety of the nursing student in ICU. A comparative correlative study was conducted to determine if there was a significant difference in the change in state anxiety between nursing students during a clinical rotation to ICU and those assigned to a maternity unit, to determine if there was a relationship between nursing students• propensity to anxiety and their anxiety reaction during clinical rotations, and to determine sources of perceived anxiety during the two rotations. Four research questions formed the basis of the investigation.

Data were collected from 19 senior nursing students who were randomly assigned to an ICU rotation and 19 who were randomly assigned to a maternity rotation. The instruments used were Spielberger's State Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Objects Content Test, and a Demographic Data Sheet. Data were analyzed with t-tests, correlation coefficients, and contingency tests. All tests were conducted at the 0.05 level of significance.

The analyses revealed that nursing students in the ICU rotation experienced significantly higher levels of state anxiety than nursing students in the maternity rotation on the first clinical day, but by the sixth clinical day the two groups showed no difference in state anxiety. A pearson product moment correlation revealed that students in both ii groups who scored high on trait anxiety also scored high on state anxiety on the first clinical day. The sources of perceived anxiety were similar in both groups. The students in the ICU group consistently identified a greater number of specific sources of anxiety than students in the maternity group. The ICU group identified technical procedures as the most stressful sources of anxiety. The students in the maternity group identified activities related to care of mothers in labor and normal care of infants as the most stressful sources of anxiety. Implications for nursing and further research were given.