Guiding actions to control academic stress and during professional practices in nursing students

Abstract

This article is aimed at proposing actions that contribute to reducing academic stress and during professional practices, present in students of the last semester of the Nursing program of the UDES, based on knowing, from the quantitative paradigm, the perception of the students on the factors related to the degree of manifestation of stress, both academic and in the realization of their practices, which configured a field study, non-experimental, of descriptive level, with an intentional sample of thirty students attending the 10th semester, employing as an instrument for gathering information, the questionnaire. Among the results, the factors related to a higher level of academic stress, in the dimension of the generating situation: task overload, understanding of class topics, and limited time to do assignments; in the physical reactions dimension: sleep disorders, drowsiness, and nail-biting; and, in the psychological reactions dimension: restlessness, anxiety and concentration problems; of the factors related to the level of stress in professional practices, of the achievement dimension: not knowing how to respond to the patient, deterioration, and complaint of the patient; and the organizational climate dimension: excessive workload. It is concluded that the factors related to the level of stress, have an emphasis on academic training and do not have a high level of impact, proposing guiding actions to be managed. Furthermore, the existence of academic stress is a statistically determinant of the existence of stress during professional practices.