Evaluation of a psychological readiness program and final clinical practicum among final year nursing students: A mixed methods study.

Background: Final year nursing students may experience higher levels of stress owing to the increasing complexity and expectations from their clinical practicums. Enhancing psychological readiness may be a potential strategy to enhance nursing students' transition to the clinical area.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of a psychological readiness enhancement for transition to professional practice program and a 10-week clinical practicum on students' psychological wellbeing, resilience, practice readiness and confidence.

Design: A sequential mixed-methods approach comprising of a single-group evaluation and descriptive qualitative study.

Setting: Final year nursing students enrolled in an undergraduate nursing program from one autonomous university in Singapore was recruited.

Participants: 148 final year nursing students participated in the single-group evaluation study. A total of 24 participants who completed the psychological readiness program were recruited in the qualitative study.

Methods: This study included two phases. Phase I comprised of an evaluation of a blended psychological readiness program and clinical practicum. Data was collected across three waves to assess nursing students' psychological wellbeing, resilience, practice readiness and confidence. In Phase II, a qualitative study using individual semi-structured online interviews was conducted to examine students' experiences of the psychological readiness program and clinical practicum.

Results: The psychological readiness program led to significant changes in students' anxiety and patient centeredness scores. The accumulated effects of the psychological readiness and clinical practicum showed significant improvements in students' practice readiness and confidence. Although there were no significant improvements in depression, stress and resilience scores, there were improvements in the trend across three waves. Students attributed these improvements to the psychological readiness program and sharing by the alumni.

Conclusions: The findings of this study laid the foundation for the development of psychological readiness programs. However, larger scale studies using randomized controlled trial designs should be used to confirm the effects of these interventions.