The Effect of Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing Course on the Approach and Avoidance Motivation Levels to Emotional Situations of Nursing Students

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the effects of a mental health and psychiatric nursing course on the approach and avoidance motivation levels of nursing students to emotional situations and the relationship of these levels to the nurses' socio-demographic characteristics. Methods: This was a single group (no control group) pretest-posttest intervention study that included 74 nursing students taking a mental health and psychiatric nursing course in a school of health sciences. The Need for Affect Scale (NAS) was given to the nursing students at the beginning and at the end of course, which was an interval of 14 weeks. Data were evaluated by numbers, percentages, means, standard deviations and t-tests. Results: 55.4% of the students were aged between 22 and 24 years and 83.3% of them were female. The mean pretest NAS score of the approach subscale was 15.62 +/- 9.89 and the mean posttest score was 27.17 +/- 10.91, which was significantly different (p<0.001). The mean pretest NAS score of the avoidance subscale was 11.32 +/- 9.77 and the mean posttest score was 8.40 +/- 12.65, which was not significantly different (p>0.05). Conclusion: Our results indicate that a mental health and psychiatric nursing course can positively impact the ability of nursing students to approach emotional situations. In light of these positive results, we recommend repeating this research with a larger number of students and including a control group.