Impact of a Brief Mindfulness Exercise on Practical Nursing Students’ Test Anxiety

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project is to determine whether a brief, virtually delivered mindfulness-based intervention has an impact on the self-perceived levels of test anxiety in practical nursing students at GateWay community college in Phoenix, Arizona.Background: There is evidence in the current literature to support the use of a mindfulness exercise to alleviate stress and anxiety in students at varying levels of education. Nursing students face additional academic and testing stress which makes. The problem of test anxiety was identified and explored within practical nursing students. Methods: This quality improvement project used the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to implement a quasi-experimental pretest and posttest design intervention. First, the student’s baseline self-perceived test anxiety score was determined using a validated test anxiety scale. Secondly, a brief, virtual, mindfulness exercise was performed. Thirdly the test anxiety scale was administered again to determine if a change in self-perceived test anxiety levels occurred. Results: The pretest and posttest self-perceived test anxiety scale scores (n=14) were compared. The average pretest scores were 2.79, which are considered the high end of normal test anxiety. After the intervention the average score was 2.59 which is average test anxiety. Conclusions: The pretest and posttest comparisons demonstrated that a brief, virtually delivered mindfulness exercise reduced the self-perceived test anxiety scores of practical nursing students at GateWay community College in Phoenix, Arizona. This finding supports future exploration of how mindfulness can benefit nursing students.