COVID-19 fear among junior undergraduate nursing students during the pandemic in South Africa

• Published in: Health SA = SA Gesondheid Vol. 28; no. 13; p. 2371
• Main Authors: Steenkamp, Ilze, Chipps, Jennifer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: South Africa African Online Scientific Information Systems (Pty) Ltd t/a AOSIS 2023; AOSIS (Pty) Ltd; AOSIS; AOSIS Publishing on behalf of University of Johannesburg
• Subjects: Chronic illnesses; Clinical medicine; clinical practical training; College students; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; COVID-19 diagnostic tests; Discriminant analysis; Distance learning; Epidemics; Ethics; fear; Health Care Sciences & Services; Health Policy & Services; Nursing; Nursing education; Nursing students; Online education; Original Research; pandemic; Pandemics; Physiology; Portugal; Questionnaires; South Africa; Students; South Africa; Portugal; COVID-19; clinical practical training; nursing students; pandemic; fear
• ISSN: 1025-9848; 2071-9736; 2071-9736
• DOI: 10.4102/hsag.v28i0.2371

During the COVID-19 pandemic, nursing students continued to work in facilities to complete clinical hours. Little was known about the impact of COVID-19 on nursing students during this time.
To investigate fear of COVID-19 among junior undergraduate nursing students during the pandemic.
A student nursing school at a university in the Western Cape, South Africa.
A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 559 nursing students. A self-administered questionnaire with the validated COVID-19 fear scale (α= 0.84) was distributed. Scale reliability, factor analysis, means and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for items, overall scale and associations with demographic variables were tested using Kruskal-Wallis Independent Samples and Mann-Whitney U tests.
There were 370 respondents (68.51% response rate), predominantly female (294, 79.5%) and exhibited a mean age of 21.9 years (± 3.9). More than half, 192 respondents (51.9%) reported mild fear of COVID-19, 103 (27.8%) moderate fear and 57 (15.4%) severe fear. Apart from gender, no significant demographic associations with overall COVID-19 fear were found. Factor analysis identified two distinct factors, physiological and emotional expressions of fear (moderate significant positive correlation between factors [
= 0.541]).
The study's findings reveal that junior undergraduate nursing students, during the pandemic, generally reported experiencing mild fear related to COVID-19.
This study contributes to the field of COVID-19 fear studies, provides insight into factors influencing fear levels and validates the scale's factor structure.