Loneliness and stress among nursing students during distance learning

Keren Grinberg

Published on: 2022-06-22

Abstract

Background: For years, academia has been a meeting place for young people of about the same age, who form new friendships, get to know different sectors and new cultures, and forge romantic relationships. Student life can be very busy with the juggling of studies and casual jobs, but their sense of shared fate helps many of them to withstand the stress and succeed. Shared work and meetings between the students create wider and deeper learning. The COVID outbreak has set big challenges for the world's population, and we expect to see its implications in the near and distant future. The pandemic has produced creative and innovative technological solutions, such as distance learning, but at the same time has forced us to cope with mental and physical problems,m and may have exacerbated them. Due to the pandemic, academic centers have been forced to switch to distance learning. Students in general, and nursing students in particular, are facing new challenges – first and foremost, social isolation that is the result, among others, of online lessons and physical distance. This study aimed to investigate the effect of distance learning on nursing students' levels of loneliness and stress, and the relationship between the nursing students' degree of loneliness and their level of stress during the COVID pandemic.
Method: This correlational research included 120 nursing students studying for a registered nurse degree in academic centers in Israel during the Covid pandemic. The study included a 4-part online questionnaire: 1. Demographics; 2. Studying experience and satisfaction questionnaire; 3. Social loneliness questionnaire; 4. Stress level questionnaire.
Results: A significant relationship was found between the students' studying experience and their degree of loneliness (r=.302, p<0.05). No relationship was found between their studying experience and stress level. A positive relationship was found between the nursing students' degree of loneliness and their level of stress, so that the higher their loneliness – the higher their stress (r=.327, p<.001). No relationships were found between sociodemographic variables and either loneliness or stress.
Conclusions: The distance learning experience during the COVID pandemic was related to the students' degree of loneliness, but not necessarily to their stress level. It seems, however, that loneliness is indirectly linked to the students' stress level. In situations of consistent distance learning, problems of loneliness and stress among nursing students should be identified, and intervention programs to alleviate these problems should be developed. The goal should be to maintain the nursing students' mental welfare and resilience.