Updated (Covers Rationale): Nursing is a highly demanding profession with prolonged levels of stress. Overtime, the vast amount of stressors faced by nurses can lead to poor physical and mental health which can account for the high rate of burnout and attrition among newly graduated nurses (Song & Lindquist, 2015). This significant amount of stress begins in nursing school. Nursing students face high levels of stress and anxiety in their competitive program, consisting of heavy academic course loads and stringent examinations, on top of the completion of long clinical hours. In addition, nursing students must balance their personal stressors, such as demands of family and work, with their education. Student’s personal demands can exacerbate…show more content… This was accomplished by encouraging nursing students to take a pledge to perform an activity for four weeks which helps to relieve their stress and anxiety. The nursing students were then prompted to share a photo of their self-care pledge to an Instagram account, called “Pledge2pledge_nursing”, in hopes to inspire their fellow nursing peers. This could be done either by taking a photo of partaking in the self-care activity or sharing a photo of the pledge written on a piece of paper. By taking the pledge to engage in a self-care activity, nursing students were able to strengthen their self-efficacy in managing their stress and anxiety (Jordan, Khubchadani & Wiblishauser, 2016). Self-efficacy can be defined as one’s beliefs about their ability to deal with situations which may be ambiguous,unpredictable, and/or stressful (Jordan et al., 2016). When nursing students took this pledge, they were making the time and commitment to engage in a behaviour they deemed effective at temporarily relieving their stress and anxiety. The ability to engage in a specific self-care behaviour despite work-related challenges as been shown to increase one’s coping self-efficacy (Jordan et al., 2016). As a result, nurses who have higher levels of coping self-efficacy have shown to stay longer within the nursing profession, work harder, and effectively perform job-related tasks, despite the challenges and high stress (Jordan et al., 2016). Moreover, it has been recognized, that social support is effective at enabling an individual to manage their stress and maintain optimal well-being. In particular, Reeve, Shumaker, Yearwood, Crowell & Riley (2013), state that there is a direct positive association between individuals high levels of perceived social support and
