A stress survey in nurse anesthetist students

Abstract

© 2018, Medical Association of Thailand. All rights reserved. Objective: To study the stress situation in nurse anesthetist students during a training program. Materials and Methods: The present prospective study was to survey the stress level in 30 volunteered nurse anesthetist students by using the well-validated anesthesia related and psychological stress tests. All students responded to the questionnaires three times at two months interval, away from term examination of their academic year. The test scores were analyzed and interpreted for the severity of stress. Results: Nurse anesthetist students had to work five days a week with night shifts and average sleeping time of five to six hours per day. Off-duty issues (p=0.032) and mortality/morbidity information (p=0.015) were a source of stress. The susceptibility to stress showed no correlation with gender, experience, working data, and patient safety issue; however, it was significantly related to sources of stress like personal problems (p=0.045), primarily family (p=0.036), and financial (p=0.042). Their vulnerable periods were pre-and intra-operative period, mainly night duties (60.0%). Nevertheless, most of them expressed critical revision (63.3%) to cope with the difficulties in anesthesia. Anesthesiology is an unaccustomed, stressful subject. Nurse anesthetist students were worried about the increasing of the compromising situation and the solution to stabilize patients during the surgical procedure. Though students were under the supervision of an attending staff, they usually were left alone intra-operatively in the operating theatre. This might easily aggravate the tension state to the beginners. Financial and family problems forced students to scale down their competency and learning achievement. However, most of them were mature enough to make a decision when confronting difficulties. Conclusion: Nurse anesthetist students worked under pressure and expressed considerable worries because of tight training schedule, night shifts, and self-problems e.g., lack of sleep, Financial, and family problems.