relationship between fear of negative evaluation and clinical decision-making among nursing students: a cross-sectional study

Background & objective: many nursing students feel worried or afraid of being judged badly, and this worry can hurt how well they do their clinical work. this study wanted to understand how this fear connects to how well nursing students can make decisions in clinical situations.materials & methods: this study was a cross-sectional design. information was collected at one point in time. the researchers chose 216 nursing students who were in their third and fourth years of study using simple random selection method.  three instruments were used to collect data: the clinical decision-making scale in nursing, the brief fear of negative evaluation scale, and the demographic form. spss version 26 was used to analyze the data. descriptive and inferential statistics, including the nonparametric mann-whitney u test, kruskal-wallis test, and spearman correlation, were used to analyze the data.results: the mean score of clinical decision-making was 84.39 ± 7.48 out of 145 and the mean score of fear of negative evaluation was 28.24 ± 10.65 out of 60. a statistically significant relationship was found between fear of negative evaluation and only one specific aspect of decision-making - the canvasing of objectives and values subscale (p < 0.001). on the other hand, only gender among the demographic variables was significantly associated with fear of negative evaluation (p < 0.001).conclusion: overall, the results of the study showed no relationship between clinical decision-making of undergraduate nursing students and their fear of receiving a poor grade. however, fear of negative evaluation and the ability to make clinical decisions among the students studied were both at an average level. therefore, it is recommended that methods be used to improve clinical decision-making while reducing students' fear of evaluation. one of the important results of this study was that the subscale of canvasing of objectives and values in clinical decision making was significantly correlated with fear of negative evaluation, even in the absence of an overall relationship. this suggests that some aspects of the decision-making process, particularly those dealing with professional and personal values, may be more susceptible to psychological elements such as fear of others' opinions.