[Psychological characteristics of stress in nursing student].

Background: Student nurses have perceived stress higher than students taking other training courses. The objective of this work was to investigate psychological characteristics of nursing students in an attempt to understand why they are more subject to stress than others.

Methods: We carried out a self-administered questionnaire survey to compare students taking various training courses (i.e., sport sciences, psychology, medicine, and nursing). Perceived stress and health, high-risk behaviors, different psychological determinants of stress (i.e. coping, emotional skills, resilience, self-esteem, personality, chronotype) were assessed.

Results: Multiple linear regression analysis yielded a model showing that seven independent variables were correlated with perceived stress among students: perceived health, neuroticism, stress tolerance, active coping, understanding of one's own emotions, chronotype amplitude, and use of one's own feelings. Moreover, medicine and nursing students were more stressed and perceived their health in a more negative way than students taking other training courses. Nursing students were also less stress tolerant.

Conclusion: The regression model suggests that psychological characteristics influence stress level among students. Moreover, the results show that medicine and nursing students differ from other students on resilience in stress tolerance dimension as well as on a set of behaviors. Practical perspectives are discussed.