Protective resources against stress among student nurses: Influences of self-efficacy, emotional intelligence and conflict management styles.

Aims: This study aimed to investigate the levels of stress among French student nurses and the influence of different personal resources on their well-being and stress levels.

Background: Student nurses have to cope with strong emotional demands, leading them to experience academic stress. Recent studies have highlighted the influence of personal resources such as self-efficacy, conflict management styles and emotional intelligence on the ability to cope with stressful situations. However, the contributions of these different factors have so far been explored separately.

Design: A multicenter cross-sectional survey was performed from February to April 2022. The sample consisted of 1021 first-year student nurses from different nursing schools in France (including 890 women and 113 men), aged 18-55 years.

Methods: Students completed an online questionnaire containing measures of well-being, Perceived Stress Scale, Occupational Stress, Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale, Emotional Intelligence and Conflict Management Styles.

Results: Nearly half (40.4%) of participants reported experiencing symptoms of stress. However, they also reported a satisfactory well-being and high self-efficacy for coping with stressful situations. Multiple regression analyses revealed major contributions of self-efficacy to stress and well-being and additional mediation models showed that these contributions were partially mediated by awareness of one's own and others' emotions.

Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of continuing to work on the construction of appropriate educational activities that are consistent with the technical and, above all, nontechnical skills of student nurses.