Coping, stress, and personality in Spanish nursing students: A longitudinal study.

The purpose of this study was to examine the dominant stress coping style in nursing students, its relationships with stressful life events and personality traits, and the students' changes during their academic training. A non-experimental two-wave longitudinal design was carried out in 199 nursing students recruited from three Spanish nursing schools. The Stressful Life Events Scale, NEO-FFI, and COPE questionnaire were administered at the beginning (T1) and end (T2) of their nursing studies. Descriptive statistics, Anova(s), NPar tests, and Pearson correlations were carried out. Results show that nursing students' dominant coping style was emotion-focused coping, both at T1 and T2. Highly significant correlations between emotional coping and the neuroticism trait were found. Coping, stress, and personality changed positively during the training program. At T2, the use of problem-focused strategies increased, and participants became more extroverted, agreeable, and conscientious. Coping and personality changes experienced by nursing students throughout their degree program seem to mirror the professional competences needed by future licensed nurses.