Development and Validation of a Nursing Students' Clinical Practice Stress Scale: A Mixed Methods Study.

BACKGROUND: In clinical environments, nursing students encounter a variety of stressors, which can significantly impact their well-being, learning outcomes and the quality of care they provide to patients. AIMS: To develop and validate the Nursing Students' Clinical Practice Stress Scale (NSCPSS) to measure clinical practice stressors in nursing students in Sri Lanka. DESIGN: An exploratory sequential mixed methods design. METHODS: The study was conducted in two phases. The NSCPSS items were developed in the qualitative phase based on data gathered through focus group interviews and a literature review. The quantitative phase focused on the psychometric evaluation of the scale, assessing its face, content, construct, convergent, discriminant validity and reliability using data from 183 nursing undergraduate students. RESULTS: Four factors were extracted from 30 items through exploratory factor analysis: (1) lack of knowledge, skills and experience, (2) lack of academic communication and support systems, (3) challenges in managing academic and clinical demands and (4) challenges in the clinical learning environment. These four factors collectively explained 57.0% of the total variance. The confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated the acceptable goodness-of-fit indices. All factors showed reliability, with internal consistency and composite reliability indices > 0.6. CONCLUSION: The NSCPSS is a valid and reliable instrument to measure the clinical stressors experienced by undergraduate nursing students. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The development and validation of the NSCPSS is a key step toward identifying stressors that undergraduate nursing students experience during clinical practice. It contributes to enhancing effective learning during clinical practice and students' well-being and develops a resilient future nursing workforce capable of delivering high-quality patient care. REPORTING METHOD: Good Reporting of a Mixed Methods Study (GRAMMS) checklist. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: No patient or public contribution.