Prevalence of Stress, Sources and Coping Strategies among Nursing and Midwifery Students in Three Nursing Training Schools in the Buea Municipality, Cameroon

Background: Stress is a common human experience blamed for many ills. Nursing students experience high levels of stress and recent research on health care related fields and stress has indicated that nursing students experience higher levels of stress compared to students in the other health disciplines.Objectives: This study was carried out to determine the prevalence of stress, identify its sources and coping strategies amongst nursing and midwifery students from three nursing training schools in the Buea Municipality.Methods: A quantitative cross sectional study design was used to conduct the study for 6 months. The study population consisted of nursing and midwifery students from the Faculty of Health Sciences University of Buea, Biaka University Institute and Redemption Higher Institute of Biomedical and Management Sciences in the Buea Municipality. Purposive and a simple random sampling techniques were used to select the three nursing training schools and the participants respectively. The participants were undergraduate student nurses and midwives who had had previous clinical experience. Probability proportionate to size sample technique was used to determine the number of participants from each school. Data was collected from the participants regarding their stress levels, sources of stress, and the strategies they used to cope with stress. The data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Data collected was entered in to an excel spreadsheet version 2010 and analysed using SPSS Version 25. Inferential statistics was also used to describe association between variables (multivariate analysis and Pearson’s correlation); a p-value < 0.05 was considered significant.Results: A total of 342 nursing and midwifery students participated in the study. The findings revealed a very high prevalence [223 (65.2%)] of stress among participants. Age 32 years+, marital status and level of studies (3rd & 4th year) were significantly associated with stress with p values of 0.021, 0.022 and 0.001 respectively. The main sources of stress among students were from school work, from peers and personal life with mean values 2.13, and 1.96 respectively. Majority [201(58.8%)] of the students relied on problem-focused strategies as means to cope with stress, followed by the emotional-focused strategies [81(23.7%)].Conclusion: The prevalence of stress among student nurses and midwives in the Buea Municipality was very high with the main sources of stress being school work, stress from peer and personal life. It is recommended that guidance counseling services be provided in all nursing training institutions and students be encouraged to ultilise the services in order to reduce the prevalence of stress.