The Relationship between Pre-clinical Practice Anxiety and Coronavirus Anxiety of Nursing Students in Türkiye

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic caused many problems in Türkiye and the world. Education became one of the most important issues negatively affected by this process. Clinical practice, which is stressful for nursing students, can be even more stressful during the pandemic process.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between pre-clinical practice anxiety and coronavirus anxiety among nursing students.

Methods: The study is a cross-sectional design. Data were collected with online survey. The study was completed with 166 nursing students. Data were collected with the Personal Information Form, the State Anxiety Inventory and Trait Anxiety Inventory (SAI and TAI), and the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS). Data were analyzed by Mann–Whitney U, Kruskal–Wallis, Independent Sample t-test, and Wilcoxon and Pearson correlations tests.

Results: The mean age of the students was 19.74 ± 1.38 years, and 81.4% were female. The anxiety levels of the students before the clinical practice; the mean score of SAI was 44.99 ± 7.3, TAI was 46.99 ± 11.7, and CAS was 3.36 ± 4.31. After clinical practice, the mean score of SAI was 43.33 ± 9.4, and CAS was 1.97 ± 2.58. There was a statistically significant decrease in the mean scores of SAI and CAS after clinical practice (P < 0.05). There was a positive relationship between SAI and CAS levels.

Conclusion: The stress and coronavirus anxiety level of nursing students was high before the first clinical practice, and their stress level decreased after the clinical practice. This study proposes the implementation of interventions to reduce the stress levels of students before clinical practice.