Anxiety Among the Nursing Students During the Initial Clinical Experience

Introduction:The clinical learning environment is a complex social entity that influences student competency within the clinical setting.Anxiety contributes to a student's performance in the clinical setting because it initiates the fight-or-flight response leading to a positive or negative outcome.Aim: The study was aimed to assess the level of anxiety among nursing students during the initial clinical experience.Methodology: A nonexperimental descriptive survey was adopted for the study.The sample comprised of 50 first-year General Nursing and Midwifery course and 50 first-year BSc nursing students were selected using a simple random technique.Demographic Performa and Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale were used to collect the data.Results: Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data.The analysis revealed that 83% of the students were having a normal range of anxiety whereas 17% of the students were having a mild to moderate level of anxiety with a Mean ±SD (1.17±0.318).The Chi-square test showed that there was a significant association between anxiety and the number of siblings (p=0.004) at a 0.05 level of significance whereas no association was found between anxiety and other demographic variables.Conclusion: The findings revealed that the teaching and training given to the students before the clinical experience was adequate and appropriate.