Experience with stress and the coping process in Chinese nursing and medical students: A constructivist grounded theory study

Background Nursing and medical students often face a variety of stressors due to the special needs of their majors, such as relatively heavy academic tasks. Their ability to cope with stress affects their health and personal development. Objectives To explore the experiences of nursing and medical students coping with stress and construct an interpretive understanding of these experiences from the perspective of nursing and medical. Design: A constructivist grounded theory approach. Settings: This study included participants from eight departments of a university in Southeastern China. Participants: Purposive sampling and snowball sampling were used to select nursing and medical students with experience coping with stress. Method Audio-recorded interviews were conducted between May 2020 and January 2021. The data analysis included initial coding, focused coding, and theoretical coding using the constant comparative method and memo writing. Results Thirty participants were included in this study. “Physical and mental harmony” was identified as the core category. The following seven categories were conceptualized: enlightening exploration, internal adjustment, seeking social support, emotional support, positive self-awakening, individual degeneration, and asymmetrical resources. Conclusion The findings identified that the goal of nursing and medical students in coping with stress is to achieve and maintain physical and mental harmony. It is necessary to help nursing and medical students achieve mental health by understanding and intervening in their stress-coping process, the facilitating factors, obstacles, such as those found in the research, and the context of their occurrence.