stress management intervention for nursing students working night shifts

Background: clinical training on shift duty is critical to nursing education and practice. stress in night shift duties is a common issue in the nursing field, potentially harming the well-being and academic performance of nursing students. the current study examined the effect of a targeted stress management intervention on self-reported stress levels and stress-related symptoms among night shift nursing students. methods: a quasi-experimental one group pretest-posttest design was adopted, with 60 students chosen from krishna vishwa vidhyapeeth, krishna institute of nursing sciences, maharashtra, karad-india using a non-probability convenient sampling method. the perceived stress scale (pss-10) and a self-structured questionnaire were used to measure stress and the influence of stress on nurses’ health. the intervention consists of four 30-minute sessions delivered on alternate days of the week through a range of teaching modalities. following each session, students received video links and were encouraged to apply one of the appropriate stress-reduction techniques with a weekly follow-up for one month. following 30 days, a post-test was administered.  data analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics and to test the research hypothesis, paired t test was used in instat 3 software. the significance level was set at p<0.05.   results: pre-intervention, 36 students (60%) experienced moderate stress, followed by 16 (26.66%) experiencing mild stress, and 8 (13.33%) experiencing severe stress after the night shift. in contrast, 39 students (65%) reported mild stress and 21 (35%) reported moderate stress following the intervention. the paired t-test value was 29.854, with a p value of <0.01, which was significantly higher than the tabulated t value. after a night shift, nursing students experienced stress-related symptoms such as insomnia, loss of appetite, fatigue, decreased attention, headache, and leg discomfort, which were significantly alleviated after the intervention (p<0.05).conclusion: stress management interventions were effective in reducing stress levels; however, students must be continually motivated to engage in these exercises daily.