Student nurses' experiences of anxiety in the clinical setting

It is known that some student nurses who experience anxiety during clinical experiences leave nursing education programs. If nurse educators can better understand the anxiety of student nurses during clinical experience, they will be able to develop educational interventions to minimize students' anxiety. Decreasing anxiety has a two-fold effect. First, when anxiety is decreased, learning may be increased. Second, decreasing anxiety may help alleviate the nursing shortage because more students complete their nursing education. This qualitative phenomenological study examines student nurses' perception of anxiety in the clinical setting. Situated cognition learning theory is the theoretical framework. The main method of data collection is unstructured face-to-face interviews with 7 student nurses. The data was analyzed using a thematic analysis. The themes are reported in the rich descriptive words of the subjects. Implications for practice are discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.