Abstract:

Objective: To identify pre-internship stress sources and their countermeasures for students with nursing specialty in
undergraduate program. It further explores efficient ways of guiding, managing, and releasing these stresses to help students transforming their roles in a mentally and physical healthy route. Methods: It chose 188 samples of undergraduates with nursing specialty right before their enrollments into a clinical internship, and conducted survey analysis using SCSQ approach. Results: The survey results showed that the overall pre-internship stress mostly reached high to middle level and a few resides on a lower level, occupying 22.34%, 69.68% and 7.97% of total sample size in each level respectively. In the sample, the top-5 stress sources were identified as less chance of practical training, unsatisfying career prospects, and failure in joining a public enterprise, inability in managing emergent medical cases and low scores in course exams. It also found that students took various active measures to counter
these stresses. An analysis of correlation between the stress sources and countermeasures showed that, at 5% significance level, students in the sample were most active in handling stresses from chance of practical training and career prospects. Conclusion: The research concludes that improving operating skills, enhancing capability building, strengthening career counseling efforts are three most efficient ways in helping the release of these stresses.

Key words: undergraduate in nursing specialty, pre-internship, stress sources, countermeasures, survey