Affiliations 

  • 1 Universiti Teknologi MARA
MyJurnal

Abstract

Clinical posting is the most important part in nursing education, requiring knowledge, skills, and the right
attitude to facilitate the development to be a professional nurse. However, clinical posting was found to be the
most stressful phase for nursing students throughout their education process in most countries. As nursing
students enter the real hospital environment with the lack of knowledge and nursing skills, their health can be
affected. The aim of this study is to assess the level of stress and physio-psycho-social symptoms among
nursing students in a public university during clinical posting. This cross-sectional study design involved 181
undergraduate nursing students who had completed their clinical posting in a government hospital. The
results showed that the nursing students experienced stress most of time especially during their clinical
posting. The most common cause of stress was from the workload and assignment and the most common
response to stress was behavioral symptoms. This study revealed that the residence where these students lived
had significance with the level of stress during their clinical posting (p=0.01). Detecting early stress events,
creating more effective environment and understanding the effectiveness of coping behaviors may help
nursing educators reduce the negative effects of stress which will altogether help students handle stress more
effectively.