Relationship between Clinical Practice Stress, Communication Skills, and Clinical Performance in Nursing Students Who Experienced Virtual Online Clinical Practice

Abstract

Background: This study aims to investigate the relationship between clinical practice stress, communication skills, and clinical performance of nursing students who have engaged in virtual online practicum due to coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19). The findings will serve as foundational data for developing education programs to enhance nursing students’ clinical performance.Methods: The data were collected from 111 third- and fourth-year nursing students at a nursing school in Busan Metropolitan City who experienced virtual online clinical practice due to COVID-19, from October 4 to October 15, 2021. Instruments to measure clinical practice stress, communication skills, and clinical performance were used. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one way analysis of variance, and Pearson’s correlation coefficients.Results: Among nursing students who have engaged in a virtual online clinical practice, the mean clinical practice stress score was 2.49±0.53, and the mean communication skills score was 4.01±0.43. The mean clinical performance score was 3.80±0.56. Clinical performance was significantly positively correlated with communication skills (<i>r</i>=0.62; <i>P</i><0.001).Conclusions: Based on these results, it is important to develop and implement education programs that enhance communication skills in order to improve clinical performance in nursing students who have experienced virtual online practice. As this study was conducted on nursing students at a single school, interpretation of the results requires caution. Thus, future research should recruit a larger study population and identify relevant variables.