Characteristics of nursing students with high levels of academic resilience: A cross-sectional study

Background: Academic resilience is an important characteristic that helps nursing students, who must engage in intensive learning and clinical practice, to overcome academic stress and adapt to their school and the clinical field. Objectives: To determine the characteristics of nursing students with high academic resilience. Design: This study used a cross-sectional design. Setting: Three universities in South Korea. Subjects: We recruited a convenience sample of 254 nursing students. Methods: Academic resilience, general characteristics, clinical practice stress, clinical practice satisfaction, and social-affective capability were assessed via self-reported questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-squared test, and analysis of variance with Tukey's post hoc test. Results: The mean academic resilience score was 3.79. A greater proportion of respondents with high levels of academic resilience had good interpersonal relationships (χ² = 35.175, p <.001), high academic grades (χ² = 30.968, p <.001), a role model (χ² = 9.770, p =.033), and high satisfaction with their major (χ² = 20.214, p =.001). Significant differences in the subscale scores for clinical practice stress, including burden of clinical tasks (F = 4.727, p =.010), conflict of interpersonal relations (F = 4.889, p =.008), and conflict with patients (F = 7.023, p =.001), were found among the academic resilience groups. We also observed differences in the subscale scores of clinical practice satisfaction, including practice content (F = 4.894, p =.008) and practice environment (F = 8.301, p <.001). Respondents in the high resilience group had higher social-affective capability scores than did those with lower resilience (F = 43.994, p <.001). Conclusion: Based on our results, students with high academic resilience are more likely to continue their studies and benefit from programs that strengthen their social-affective capability. We therefore propose that nursing school curriculum focus on enhancing social-affective capability.