South African nursing students' stress and resilience during the global COVID-19 health crisis

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate nursing students' psychological distress and their response to stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 370 South African nursing students (female= 75%; mean age= 21.9 years, SD = 3.9 years). Students completed the following scales: Compassion Satisfaction and Fatigue, Kessler Psychological Distress, and Response to Stressful Experiences. Findings from the descriptive statistics and inferential statistical analyses indicated that students meeting the criteria for being well were likely to have higher resilience scores. Protective factors such as self-efficacy, active coping, and spirituality suggest higher resilience during COVID-19-related stressful events. Physiological factors such as self-reported medical conditions and lack of sleep were associated with poorer mental well-being. These findings provide a profile of nursing students' coping and adaptation to a community-spread pandemic. From these findings, nursing schools could manage students' well-being by providing needed resources in their current and future work health support programmes.

Keywords:

• pandemic challenges
• coping mechanisms
• mental health
• educational disruption

Declaration of conflict interests

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all students who volunteered to participate in this study.

Data availability

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.