COVID-19-induced anxiety and protective behaviour among nursing students: A survey from western India

The COVID-19 Pandemic has caused anxiety and stress among people. Nursing students, being an important link in the delivery of health care services, are always exposed to stressful situations which in turn put a great toll on their mental health. Moreover, the perceived risk of pandemics motivates people to embrace different protective measures so as to reduce any potential threats of an emerging health concern.

The aim of this study was to assess the COVID-induced anxiety and protective behaviors among nursing students.

Nursing students studying at 02 nursing institutes of Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India were enrolled for the study. The data were collected using COVID-induced anxiety scale and protective behaviors towards COVID-19 Scale. These scales were converted to online google forms, and the link was circulated among 370 nursing students through emails and WhatsApp. A total of 229 students submitted their responses within stipulated time and were included in the final data analysis.

The response rate of the survey was 62%. Evidently, nursing students had a moderate level of anxiety (mean score 31.28 ± 5.29) due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Overall protective behavior mean score was 56.63 ± 6.4 which reflects that students were following higher quality of protective behaviors. There is a negative linear correlation between anxiety score and protective behavior score.

The nursing students exhibited a moderate level of anxiety, and routing protective behaviors were frequently performed by these students. There is a timely need to plan and implement interventions for nursing students so as to make them self-capable to resolve psychosocial issues, especially during disease outbreaks.