Non-pharmacological strategies to reduce anxiety in nursing students: A review article

Nursing students suffer from additional stress. This stress have a negative effects on students' mental health. This study aims to provide an overview of researches in the field non-pharmacological strategies to reduce anxiety in nursing students.  In this study, different information sources such as ISI, Medline (Pubmed), medlib, Scopus John Wily, Science direct, Index Medicus, and ovid between 1938 and 2015 were investigated. The results of these studies were carefully analyzed. In these studies, various methods including relaxation techniques and decisiveness training have been addressed. After the electronic search, 88 articles were retrieved, of which 58 were removed due to incomformity. Electronic searches were made using the key words "non-drug strategies", "anxiety", and "nursing students" in the titles and abstracts of articles in Mesh. The results showed the great effectiveness of non-pharmacological methods, especially mental relaxation, relaxation, stress management programs, and aromatherapy, in reduction of the nursing students' anxiety. The stress of a nursing student affects the overall system efficiency and quality of care. Therefore, it is recommended that the educational authorities and educators identify the anxious students and use appropriate methods to improve their condition.