Psychosocial Risk and Quality of Relationships among Nursing Students during Clinical Learning

In addition to academic stress, nursing students have to face work-related stress during their clinical practice in hospitals. Specifically, clinical placements provide real-world environments in which students can develop clinical skills and attitudes toward the nursing profession. Nevertheless, nursing students describe clinical placements as unsatisfying experiences, reporting feeling unwelcome, poor support and feedback. The aim of this study was to test a conceptual model of the relationship among role stress, relationship between nurse tutor and students, student's perceived respect and satisfaction with clinical practice. A cross-sectional, descriptive online survey was completed by 278 second- and third-year undergraduate nursing students enrolled at an Italian university. We tested relationship between variables by using the principles of structural equation modeling. The overall results suggested that the model fitted the data well. We observed the expected positive relationship between perceived respect and satisfaction with clinical practice. Role ambiguity was significantly associated with clinical practice satisfaction. Role conflict was negatively associated with perceived respect. Relationship with nurse tutor was significantly associated with role ambiguity, role conflict, and clinical practice satisfaction. This study explored the role of clinical practice as working and learning context for nursing students. Healthy workplaces characterized by respect, trust and high-quality relationships may reduce psychosocial risk in undergraduate nurses. Due to the current global nursing shortage, our results may have important implications for graduate recruitment, retention of young nurses and professional progression.