Undergraduate Nursing Students' Mental Health and Psychiatric Clinical Experience and Their Career Choice in Nursing: Perspectives from the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria

Background: Recruiting young nurses into mental health and psychiatric nursing in Nigeria is difficult and limited. The study aimed to explore undergraduate nursing students' mental health and psychiatric clinical experience and their career choice in nursing. Methods: A cross-sectional survey in classroom settings, using a standardized instrument Attitude towards Psychiatry questionnaire (ATP), explored the attitude of undergraduate nursing students after their mental health/ psychiatric nursing clinical experiences using a chi-square test to compare their positive and negative responses. Results: 122 undergraduate students participated, of whom 90% were female and 10% male, with an overall response rates of 95.6 percent. The majority 59.8% showed positive attitude, while 40.2% showed negative attitude towards psychiatric nursing, indicating that the clinical experience provides positive experiences for some of the participants. Conclusion: Clinical experience in mental health nursing can positively influence perceptions, reduce stigma, and attract nurses to mental health and psychiatric nursing practice. human resource for mental health, specifically psychiatric nurses [11]. Internationally, the shortage of psychiatric nurses is partly attributed to the negative attitudes of nursing students toward mental health disorders, which results in their not considering a career in mental health and psychiatric nursing [12]. A study in Belgium [3] reported that stigma informs nurses professional role constructs and identity and suggest the need to tackle stigma as to motivate nurses to work in mental health care settings. In addition, a study in Australia by Stevens et al. [13]explore career preferences of undergraduate nursing students, comparing their preferences at the start, middle, and end of their Bachelor of Nursing program, and reported that mental health nursing was the least preferred for most of the students. Clinical experience plays an important role in nursing education. A study show that students often enter psychiatric courses with a preconceived image of people with mental illness as dangerous and should be feared [14]. Attitude building of undergraduate nursing students is of utmost importance, as this occurs largely during the period of training [3]. Clinical experience is the bridge by which nursing students becomes familiar with the reality of mental health and prepares them for their professional role, provides opportunities