Correlation between Educational Stress and Professional Self-Esteem of Nursing Students

Background: Nursing education is a highly stressful program affecting the professional perception and professional self-esteem of students. However, it is observed that the correlation between nursing education stress and professional self-esteem has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature of our country and around the world. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the correlation between stress experienced by nursing students during education and professional self-esteem and the factors affecting such stress. Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted with 360 nursing students between October 2019 and November 2019. The data were collected with a Personal Information Form, Nursing Education Stress Scale, and Professional Self-Esteem Scale. To analyse the data, descriptive statistics, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, independent-samples t test, One-Way ANOVA, Pearson correlation analysis were used. Results: Students who had university graduate parents, chose the profession willingly, wanted to work as a nurse after graduation and stated that they could recommend the profession to others had significantly lower education stress mean scores. In addition, students who were in senior year, female, had university graduate parents, had a good financial status, chose the profession willingly, wanted to work as a nurse, stated that they could recommend the profession to others and had a overall academic success between 3-4 had significantly higher professional self-esteem mean score. Conclusions: Stress levels of nursing students were above average and no correlation was found between education stress and professional self-esteem. It can be recommended to assess the stress, self-esteem levels and related factors starting from the first year of nursing education and to organize the curriculum in a manner that decreases the education stress and increases the professional self-esteem of nursing students.