RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Many nursing university students were stressed during clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to identify the difference between stress of clinical practice and mental health according to behavioral styles in nursing university students.METHODS: The participants of this study were 233 junior and senior nursing students who had experienced clinical practice. Data were collected by self-report questionnaires in online from November 2017 to March 2018. Collected data were analyzed with SPSS/WIN 25.0 using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients.RESULTS: The most frequent DISC behavior style of the subjects was conscientiousness (43.8%), follewed by steadiness (19.7%), influence (18.9%), and dominance (17.6%). The participants'scores for stress of clinical practice and mental health were 3.35±0.55 and 1.13±0.65. The stress of clinical practice of the subjects was different according to DISC behavior styles(F=2.86, p=.038). The results show that the higher the score of stress of clinical practice was the higher the score of mental health(r=.51, p < .001).CONCLUSION: This study found that the difference of DISC behavioral styles can be attributed to stress of clinical practice. Therefore, nursing intervention program considering with the subjects'DISC behavior styles needs to be developed to reduce their stress of clinical practice.