Identifying nursing students’ methods to deal with stress and their substance use histories

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify nursing students’ methods to deal with stress and the history of their substance use. Materials and methods: The population and sample of this descriptive study consisted of 371 nursing students who wanted to participate in the study in the nursing department of a faculty of health sciences. Data was collected with questionnaire form, Methods to Deal with Stress Scale. For analyses, Number, Percentage, Student t Test, One Way Variance analysis were used with SPSS 18.0 statistics program. Results: Mean of ages of participants in the study was found as 20.59±1.89. 79.2% of students were female and 34.5% of them were 1st grade, 25.1% were 2nd grade, 16.4% were 3rd grade and 24.0% were 4th grade. Majority of participants (82.7%) stated that in-family communication and their communication with environment (83%) were fine. 42.3% of participants stated that stress in school environment was stemmed from exams, courses and lecturing methods. It was determined that majority of students (99.5%) did not use any substance other than cigarette and alcohol, and 81.7% of them did not currently use cigarette and 83.0% of them did not currently use alcohol. Subscale score means of students’ methods to deal with stress scale were found as follows; self-confidence approach was 12.61±4.01, optimistic approach was 8.38±2.87 unconfident/desperate approach was 11.95±4.55, submissive approach 6.68±3.42 and social support search was 7.02±1.90. Conclusion: The participants were found to use the most self-confidence approach, followed by an unconfident/ desperate approach and at least the submissive approach sub-scales. This result shows that the students use effective methods for coping with stress and have less problems in stress management.