| dc.description.abstract | Nursing students are often subject to many stressors during their time in nursing school, including clinical, academic, and social stressors. Expressive writing, journaling, or free writing, all terms used to describe the act of freely writing, has been recognized as an effective method of stress management in previous research. However, there is little to be found on the impact of journaling on nursing students. A qualitative descriptive study with online focused interviews was utilized to explore the perceptions students had of a free writing assignment. Participants were specifically asked about their opinions about the assignment, their habit formation, and their perceived effects of journaling. The benefits that the participants experienced were due to their ability to use journaling as a tool to allow them to be aware of their thoughts and emotions, understand them, and then take action. Of the six participants in the study, all continued to write after the assignment was over. Two stopped journaling in the period between the end of the assignment and the time of the interview. However, both of these participants stated that they planned to begin again. Findings from the study revealed that journaling had a positive effect on the mental and emotional wellbeing of nursing students. The experiences that the participants shared illustrated that journaling has the capability of being an effective tool for stress management and overall wellbeing for nursing students. However, the limited number of participants and lack of variance among participants make it difficult to determine whether the effectiveness of free writing can be generalized for all nursing student populations. | |
