RESUMO
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