Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to determine if nursing students' state and trait anxiety increased over time spent in a baccalaureate nursing program at a public university located in the South. This study was conducted, in part, due to the high levels of college student anxiety and specifically nursing student anxiety found in the literature. High levels of anxiety among nursing students has been shown to have detrimental mental effects, physical effects, and can negatively affect academic performance, clinical performance, and patient care outcomes. Identification of both the time students are experiencing anxiety as well as the type of anxiety they are experiencing can assist nurse educators and administrators to evaluate program requirements and develop interventions to assist nursing students cope with anxiety utilizing healthy coping mechanisms. This cross-sectional study consisted of a convenience sample of 116 nursing students. It was conducted during the spring 2013 semester and examined two research questions. Is there a difference between pre-nursing, early nursing, and late nursing student state anxiety among baccalaureate nursing students and is there a difference between pre-nursing, early nursing, and late nursing student trait anxiety among baccalaureate nursing students. The study was conducting utilizing the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). It also ranked the main sources of anxiety as academic, clinical, or personal. This study found that there was a difference in both state and trait anxiety among the pre-nursing, early nursing, and late nursing students. The students with the highest state and trait anxiety were early nursing students. The students in the late nursing group had significantly lower state and trait anxiety than both the pre-nursing and early nursing students. The main source of anxiety identified by all levels of baccalaureate students in the sample was academic in nature and was the highest among pre-nursing and early nursing students. The pre-nursing and early nursing students in this sample scored well above the normed population of college students for the STAI.
