Nursing students' well-being using the job-demand-control model: A longitudinal study

Students' well-being is very important both for students and institutions. However, this field lacks longitudinal research, which focuses on the change of nursing students' well-being during their study. In order to asses such changes the four study types according to Job-Demand-Control-Support-model were used: passive, high-strain, low-strain, and active.

A longitudinal design was employed: participants were recruited in 2010/2011 (phase I) and at the end of their study in 2012 (phase II).

The study was performed in one school of health care in a university of applied sciences in Finland.

The final sample consisted of 135 nursing students (BSc) who started their study either in September 2008 or January 2009, and finished in December 2011 or May 2012.

The participants responded to the same close-ended questionnaire in both phases.

The majority of the participants experienced the study type as low-strain (phase I: 61.5%; phase II: 48.2%). The distribution according to their study type did not change substantially between both phases, although 42.2% of the participants changed their study type. The major changes of study types were from low-strain to others (21.4%), and from other study types to the active one (12.6%).

The results indicate that the majority of students do not change their study type and consequentially their well-being during their study, which is in contrast with previous research. Special attention should be put to the identification of students who change their study type to high-strain or remain in it.