Under Pressure: Student Nurses and the Weight of Critical Incidents

Nurses are one of the occupational groups in Sweden with the highest proportion of sick leave, and by the nature of their professional roles they witness and endure a lot of suffering. This Bachelors’ thesis in medicine science with a major in psychology aims to examine the prevalence of so-called critical incidents among future nurses during their education and the consequences for their well-being. The cohort studied consists of 1702 nursing students participating in the prospective LANE-study, during their fourth and sixth semesters. The results showed that 92.7% of nursing students had experienced at least one critical incident during their education, and that several incidents significantly impact burnout, sleep quality, and self-rated health. Significant effects were found concerning critical incidents based on organizational student nurse-specific incidents rather than trauma associated ones. The results also indicated that repeated exposure to the same student nurse-specific incident over time – or similar incidents of the same origin at the same time of measurement – affects the students' well-being with a type of dose-response effect. These findings suggest that critical incidents are common among nursing students and that incidents related to organizational factors have an overall impact on well-being as opposed to trauma associated ones. The field is scarcely researched, and further studies need to investigate potential interventions and instruments for these critical incidents.Keywords: Burnout, Critical incidents, Nursing students, Organizational factors, Trauma