THE RESILIENCE OF NURSING STUDENTS AT BOROMARAJONANI COLLEGE OF NURSING NAKHONRATCHASIMA, THAILAND

Abstract

This descriptive study aimed to explore strong life conditions of nursing students at Boromarajonani College of Nursing Nakhonratchasima. Population consisted of first, second, third and fourth year nursing students with a total number of 703 persons. Research instruments included: 1) A general data recording from concerning with sex, age, weight, height, studying year, grade point average, religion, source of allowance, accuracy of allowance, scholarship, the government fund for education, marital status of parents, family atmosphere, and feeling in the past twelve months; 2) a questionnaire on a strong life developed by Ninthachan et al. (2011) in accordance with Groberg’s concept (Grotberg, 1995). It comprised of 28 elements distributed in 3 components:1) I have (I have…), I am (I’m a man…), and 3) I can (I can be…). The answers were in the form of 5 rating scale with a total score 28 to 140. A high score implied a high level of strong life. It was out with 30 teenagers having similar traits to the sample group and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient calculation was at .89. There were 698 students completed questionnaire. Descriptive statistic i.e. frequency, percentage, and mean were used to analyze demographic data and the strong life conditions of nursing students.

Results of the study revealed that most of the respondents were females (95.2%), aged 18-25 years old or 20.71 (SD = 1.428) and their BMI was in normal weigh (57.3%). The respondents’ grade point average range was 2.00-3.99 and their average accumulated grade was 3.01 (SD =.476). In general, the respondents had an enough allowance, which might be because they also had scholarships or loans for education. Parents of most of the respondents mostly stayed together (78.0%), and their family got along well together (75.4%). Only 11.8 percent of the respondents claimed that they used to be upset almost every day until they had to stop doing regular activities for about two weeks or above. One point eight percent claimed that they wanted to commit suicide in the past 12 months. As a whole, the respondents had an average mean score of strong life at 120.09 (SD=9.100). However, more than one-half of the respondents (53.5%) had a score of strong life which was less than an average mean score.