As part of the development activities of the SSTeMM project, the SSTeMM team undertook to explore the current scope of published research and what is known about student nurse stress whilst in clinical placement. The purpose of this activity was to explore what was known about the degree of the problem, the nature of stress for student and what approaches to addressing the problem had been tried and tested. As a supplement to this, the SSTeMM team also wanted to assess the quality of the evidence currently published.
To do this, the SSTeMM team used a scoping review approach and reviewed papers on the subject published between 2018 and 2021. The team found that the overall quality of studies to date was not particularly good with many lacking a theoretical basis and tended to be very local (such as exploring student nurse stress in one location). Also few studies looked at the phenomenon of student nurses’ over time and very few engaged in comparative analysis with other countries. As a result the SSTeMM team recommended more longitudinal and theory informed studies should be undertaken that took a comparative analytical approach.