Nursing Students’ Stress Level and How Its Influence on Educational Praxis

Background: Nursing undergraduates deal with situations of emotional overload, presenting different levels of stress during this phase of life, which can influence the teaching-learning process and, therefore, educational praxis. Aim: Evaluate how the nursing students’ stress level influences educational practice. Methodology: Integrative Literature Review carried out following the six stages of Ganong, through its own review protocol, with external validation. An unimpeded search for the terms stress and students, nursing was carried out in the BDENF, CINAHL, DOAJ, ERIC, LILACS, MEDLINE, OneFile, SCIE, SciELO, SSCI, Scopus and Wiley databases, composing an initial universe of 232,641 studies. Four stages of refinement were applied to select the study objects, totaling 26 articles analyzed from an approach to educational praxis, supported by Paulo Freire’s framework. Results: Three data categories supported the organization of results: Concept of stress, Impact of stress on nursing students and Factors related to stress. Discussion: Regarding academic performance, studies have not addressed the repercussions of stress on student development, which permeates the cognitive and behavioral relationship. It should be noted that stress can stifle the forms of learning, as a stressed student tends to be satisfied with the teaching offered. Conclusion: Stressors agents are elements inherent to the formation process of nurses professionals. Anchored in Freire’s educational praxis, the challenge posed is that academic performance is crossed by the experiences of nursing students’ stress. Thinking about this relationship implies considering that the responsibility for the teaching-learning process is not a single path, but a process of coresponsibility.