INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANXIETY OF COVID-19 AND GENERAL HEALTH OF NURSING STUDENTS OF BABOL AZAD UNIVERSITY IN 2020-2021: A DESCRIPTIVE-CORRELATIONAL STUDY

Health workers are in the front line of the epidemics and face a lot of stress. So maintaining their physical and mental health affects the quality of work and satisfaction of the patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between general health and COVID-19 anxiety level in the nursing students of Babol Azad University, Iran.

This descriptive-correlational research was conducted in the second semester of 2020-2021 in Babol Azad University, Iran. The study population included 90 undergraduate nursing students who were selected by stratified random sampling. Research tools include General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and Corona Disease Anxiety Scale (CDAS). Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 20 software. Descriptive tests for frequency and t-test, correlation and multivariate regression were used.

The findings of the current research showed that the highest percentage of the research samples (53.1%) had a score between 22-42 out of 84, which shows that public health has been threatened and damaged in some areas of anxiety, depression, and physical and social aspects. In the field of COVID anxiety, the largest percentage of samples (87.7%) had a score of 0-16 out of 54 in the COVID anxiety scale. The results of Pearson's correlation test showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the anxiety of COVID and the dimensions of anxiety, depression, and physical signs of general health, and a negative significant relationship (p≤0.05) between the anxiety of COVID and the social dimension of general health.

The findings of the present research can provide useful information to educational officials of the universities to improve their educational environment and reduce stress factors, to implant stress-management workshops, and doing advices to the students about dealing with the anxiety of COVID-19, to take an important step towards improving the general health of nursing students and improving their quality of care.