Nursing students' anxiety and clinical performance

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Clinical Psychology
• Medical Training

Background:

• Mood states can influence cognitive and psychomotor performance.
• Anxiety is a common experience for nursing students during clinical training.
• Effective learning of clinical procedures is vital for patient safety.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of induced anxious and calm mood states on nursing students' performance of a newly learned clinical procedure.
• To determine if anxiety management in clinical training settings can enhance learning outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Thirty third-year and fourth-year nursing students participated.
• Students learned a novel clinical procedure.
• Anxious and calm moods were induced via video stimuli in a counterbalanced order.

Main Results:

• Nursing students demonstrated significantly lower proficiency in the procedure after anxiety induction compared to calm induction.
• Performance decrements were observed following exposure to occupational risk scenarios.

Conclusions:

• Anxiety induction negatively affects nursing students' ability to perform newly acquired clinical procedures.
• Interventions to manage anxiety in clinical training environments are recommended to improve learning and performance.