Anxiety level among pediatric nursing students during clinical training

Background The clinical training area is important for nursing education. Students are placed in different clinical training areas and specialties, including pediatric. In general, the clinical training area was reported as anxiety-provoking among nursing students in different clinical specialties. Scant researches were found regarding different pediatric nursing clinical training areas. Aim To assess anxiety level among pediatric nursing students during clinical training. Research questions Two research questions were formulated: 1) What are the levels of anxiety experienced by pediatric nursing students during clinical training? 2) Is there a difference between anxiety levels experienced by pediatric nursing students during training in different clinical areas? Design A descriptive exploratory research design was used. Sample A purposive sample of 220 pediatric nursing students was involved. Setting The study was carried out at the Faculty of Nursing, Cairo University. Tools Two tools were used for data collection: 1) a Demographic data sheet. 2) State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) adopted from Spielberg (1983). Results Pediatric nursing students during clinical training experienced either moderate to severe levels of anxiety (48.64, 48.8%), respectively. The most anxiety-provoking clinical area among pediatric nursing students was medicine. There was no statistically significant difference in state anxiety scores experienced by pediatric nursing students during the different clinical training areas. Conclusion The anxiety levels experienced by pediatric nursing students during different clinical training placements ranged between moderate and severe. the pediatric nursing students at the medicine setting experienced the highest anxiety scores, followed by the outpatient. Recommendations Assessment of trait anxiety at the beginning of clinical pediatric nursing course enrollment, provide counseling before clinical training, and follow-up of students who have higher trait anxiety levels.