Relationship between clinical environment stressors and nursing students self-efficacy in clinical performance

Introduction: Clinical education is the essential part of medical sciences which is necessary to raise competent professionals. Nursing students are confronted with a lot of stressors specialy in their clinical education. These stressors can interfere with improving competency and self-efficacy in nursing students. So we decided to investigate the relationship between clinical education stressors and clinical self-efficacy in nursing students. Method: This is a correlational study which is done in 2015 on all nursing students in their last year of education (4th year: 7th and 8th terms).  Samples were all nursing students (n=88) in Arak University of Medical Sciences which were selected by cencus sampling. Data was gathere using a questionnare consisted of three parts: Demographic information, jack and kleehammer clinical education stress test, and self-efficacy questionnare. Data was analysed bu SPSS 21 and descriptive, and correlational statistics. Results: Self-efficacy score of nursing students was 152.8±21.91which is in a high level. The highest score was in performing care program domain  (11.5±84.9) and the lower score was in evaluation of care program domain (16.5±80.11). Nursing students` clinical education stress score was 12.13±54.46 in which “the first clinical experience” was the most important stressor. There was no significant correlation between students` clinical education stress and self-efficacy (p<0.05). Although there was a significant correlation between clinical education stress and self-efficacy, and students` sex and grades. Conclusion: Results showed that there was no significant difference between clinical education stress and self-efficacy, but regarding the importance of clinical eduction for nursing students, reducing clinical environment stress and improving students` self-efficacy is of espacial importance.