The Effects of Clinical Practice Stress and Resilience on Nursing Students’ Academic Burnout

Abstract

The high degree of academic burnout experienced during academic life indicates that job skill levels during the first year following graduation are low, and the correlation with turnover intention is high. We investigated the effects of clinical practice stress and resilience on nursing students’ burnout, and searched for factors that can prevent or control burnout. We recruited a convenience sample of 202 nursing students. Academic burnout, general characteristics, clinical practice stress, and resilience were assessed via self-reported questionnaires. The mean total score of academic burnout was 44.0 points; exhaustion was the highest at 18.5 points, inefficacy was 15.9 points, and cynicism was 9.6 points. High levels of clinical practice stress affected academic burnout (β=0.194, p=0.003), while high resilience was a factor that lowered the degree of academic burnout (β=-0.449, p<0.001). Based on our results, factors affecting students’ experiences of academic burnout were clinical practice stress and resilience. We therefore propose the implementation of a new curriculum aimed at increasing satisfaction with the major, reducing clinical practice stress, and increasing resilience, including an efficient peer mentoring program for clinical practice.