[The emotional impact of a hospital]

In light of the challenge to offer future nurses a quality university education, the authors identify and evaluate the diverse activities which nurses carry out during their clinical stays, which cause a major emotional impact; therefore, these require greater attention, more knowledge and psychological resources which will aid them to successfully comply with this important aspect of their careers. With this goal in mind, the authors complied an inventory of specific stress factors for our context which was applied to a sample of 87 students at the school of nursing in Melilla. The results enabled the authors to establish a hierarchal order among the clinical experiences evaluated as having a greater stress load. These are those experiences, in descending order: terminal phase patients and death, tolerating external suffering, and hospital environment followed by oncology patients, psychiatric patients, tolerating aggressiveness, and infectious diseases. In light of the results, the authors offer some suggestions for the design of an operational program which shall mitigate and prevent as is possible the emotional impact of stress caused by clinical experiences.