Perceived Stressors, Coping Strategies, And Faculty Support Among Critical Care Accelerated Nursing Students

Background: There is an increased and continuous demand for nurses. The accelerated nursing program is a fast-track entry-level program and offers the quickest route to provide a baccalaureate degree in nursing for non-nursing graduates. Most of the enrolled students, particularly those who graduated from art and philosophical colleges, are beginners in complex and dense nursing curricula, e.g. critical care and emergency nursing courses. Those students experienced several stressors and challenges while trying to adapt or integrate into these complex nursing courses and these stressors contributed to students’ dissatisfaction and altered students well-being, academic achievement, and increased failure rates. Aim: Determine the stressors, coping strategies used for stress resolution, and faculty support as perceived by accelerated students who enrolled in the critical care courses. Design: the study includes 2 parts quantitative and qualitative. For the quantitative part, a descriptive cross-sectional study design was employed. In addition, for the qualitative part. a qualitative survey consisting of one open-ended question was used to get an in-depth understanding of the other stressors that were not captured in the questionnaire.  Setting: the study was conducted in the critical care nursing department at the faculty of nursing, Alexandria University. Sample: A convenience sampling of all students enrolled in the critical care nursing courses (I & II) who agreed to participate in the study were recruited. Tools: a self-reported online package included three tools used to determine stressors, coping strategies, and faculty support namely: (1) Student Nurse Stress Index Scale (SNSI). (2) Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced Inventory (Brief- COPE) Scale, and (3) Perceived Faculty Support Scale (PFSS). In addition, The qualitative survey consists of one structured open-ended question that asks the students to mention other stressors or challenges that were not captured in the SNSI and/or to provide more elaboration regarding their stressors. Results showed that the “fear of failing a course” was perceived as the most stressful among all students. In addition, the highest coping strategy adopted was “religion-related strategies”, and the lowest adaptive coping strategy adopted by both groups was  “humor”.  Adaptive coping styles had a significant negative correlation with maladaptive coping styles as (r = -0.374, p < 0.001) and a significant positive correlation with the perceived faculty support scale as (r = 0.098, p = 0.027). Maladaptive coping styles were significantly negatively correlated with the perceived faculty support scale as (r = -0.244, p < 0.001). These correlations suggest that higher stress levels were associated with more maladaptive coping styles and less perceived faculty support, while more adaptive coping styles were associated with less maladaptive and more perceived faculty support. Furthermore, qualitative analysis of the open-ended question revealed that the highest three themes that emerged were: limited time too much academic load, and financial burden. Conclusions:  Based on the results of the current study, it could be concluded that all students who participated in this study were experiencing stressors. Adaptive coping styles had a significant negative correlation with maladaptive coping styles and a significant positive correlation with the perceived faculty support scale. While maladaptive coping styles were significantly negatively correlated with the perceived faculty support scale. These correlations suggest that higher stress levels were associated with more maladaptive coping styles and less perceived faculty support, while more adaptive coping styles were associated with less maladaptive and more perceived faculty support. Finally, limited time due to heavy academic loads, and financial burdens extracted from the analysis of the qualitative survey were identified as stressors by the vast majority of the students.