Introduction:
Clinical education is a major part of nursing education without which training effective and qualified nurses is a far-fetched goal. So this study was done with the aim of identifying stressful factors in clinical education from vantage point of Ferdows Paramedic School students.
Methods and Materials:
This cross-sectional study was done in the first semester of 2014 -15. Of 137 undergraduate nursing and operating room students, a total of 107 students entered the study based on convenience sampling methods. Data collecting instrument was a questionnaire with two sections including: demographic and standard questionnaire, clinical education stressors (with content validity and reliability of 0.85). The average scores were calculated for each of the five domains of stressors (including interpersonal communication, humiliating experiences, educational environment, clinical experiences, and unpleasant emotions) (scores range from 1 to 5). Data were analyzed using SPSS software (version 16).
Results:
Results showed that the most stressful factors in the practice from the students’ point of view, in order of intensity, included stress from unpleasant feelings, humiliating experiences, clinical practice and interpersonal relationships. The mean score of the questionnaire was 31.3 ± 13.2 and most grades were in the range of 28 to 54 (moderate).
Conclusion:
In clinical education processes, students of various medical sciences are exposed to many stressful factors. Identifying these factors can play an important role in decreasing their stress levels. Considering that unpleasant feelings were the most stressful factor in the study, it is necessary to draw attention to this issue, explain its various dimensions and provide solutions in this regard.