Nursing students' well-being using the job-demand-control model: A longitudinal study.

Background: Students' well-being is very important both for students and institutions. However, this field lacks longitudinal research, which focuses on the change of nursing students' well-being during their study. In order to asses such changes the four study types according to Job-Demand-Control-Support-model were used: passive, high-strain, low-strain, and active.

Design: A longitudinal design was employed: participants were recruited in 2010/2011 (phase I) and at the end of their study in 2012 (phase II).

Settings: The study was performed in one school of health care in a university of applied sciences in Finland.

Participants: The final sample consisted of 135 nursing students (BSc) who started their study either in September 2008 or January 2009, and finished in December 2011 or May 2012.

Methods: The participants responded to the same close-ended questionnaire in both phases.

Results: The majority of the participants experienced the study type as low-strain (phase I: 61.5%; phase II: 48.2%). The distribution according to their study type did not change substantially between both phases, although 42.2% of the participants changed their study type. The major changes of study types were from low-strain to others (21.4%), and from other study types to the active one (12.6%).

Conclusions: The results indicate that the majority of students do not change their study type and consequentially their well-being during their study, which is in contrast with previous research. Special attention should be put to the identification of students who change their study type to high-strain or remain in it.