Assessing stress and coping in maternal newborn health nursing students

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the stressful aspects of maternal newborn health nursing students and to identify the coping strategies used by the students to overcome this stress. Student Stress and Coping inventory [SSCI] was administered to 120 students attending Maternal-Newborn health nursing Course at three different academic semesters. The results revealed that nursing clinical experience exerted the highest mean score of stress [X=3.3 for the first, X=3.1 for the second, and X=2.9 for the third group], followed by nursing classroom, social/personal environment and college environment. Threatening aspects of the clinical experience were level of own competency, evaluation, clinical instructor, being in an emergency situation, meeting own expectations and receptiveness of the instructor [S] for assistance. Significant correlation were found between the [level of stress] and the level of own competency [r=.28, P<.001]; possibility of failure [r=.24, P<0.001]; being in an emergency situation [r=.22, P<.0001]. Coping strategies were frequently used by all students in the clinical areas, followed by classroom, social/ personal and college environment strategies such as dealing directly with the situation, discussed concern[S], feelings with friends and thought of other ways of dealing with the situation by drawing on past experience were frequently used

Body image of children with heart disease

This correlation study was carried out on 60 school-aged children, 30 with heart disease [15 children with congenital heart disease [CHD] and 15 children with rheumatic heart disease [RHD]], and 30 matched controls. The draw-a-person [DAP] test was administered to each child to determine his/her body image. Each child was asked to make two penciled drawings, one of him/her self and one of a peer on a plain sheet of paper. The height and the width of each drawing were then measured. Results indicated that CHD children drew themselves significantly shorter and thinner than their peers; their drawings were also shorter in height than the drawings of the normal group. There were no statistically significant differences between the drawings of RHD children and those of their peers or normal children in height and width. The study suggested that children with heart disease, especially those with CHD, see themselves shorter and smaller than their peers and normal children which indicates their poor body images

Evaluation of an educational health program about AIDS for nursing students: knowledge, attitude and practice

The study was carried out on the entire class of the fourth year students in High Institute of Nursing, Cairo University [N = 55] to assess their knowledge, attitude and practice about AIDS. An educational health program was developed based on their needs and implemented over a period of two weeks. Two post-tests were done to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in relation to their knowledge, determine if their were any AIDS. Analysis of variance was performed to determine if their were any significant differences between the mean scores of knowledge, attitude, and practice in the pre-test, immediately after the program [post-test I], and six-weeks later [post-test II]. The major findings indicated the presence of statistically differences between the means for knowledge, attitude, and practice with respect to the pre-test, post-test I, and post-test II. The program succeeded in improving their knowledge, the mean score of knowledge rose from 11.17 grade to 14.98 grade at post test I and post-test II respectively. However, it was recommended to continue educational health programs, which should be implemented periodically on the different aspects of AIDS for the improvement of nurses knowledge, attitude and practice