Examining the General Health Status of Undergraduate Nursing Students of Ardabil University of Medical Sciences in Virtual Education During the Corona Pandemic

One of the important missions of nursing education is the general health of students, which has faced many problems with the spread of Covid-19 in the educational system at all levels. The current study aimed to investigating the general health status of nursing students in virtual education during the corona pandemic.

During this cross-sectional study, 220 undergraduate nursing students of Ardabil University of Medical Sciences were included by stratified random sampling method in the winter of 1400. The data was collected using a questionnaire that had two parts of the student's demographic profile and the Goldberg General Health Standard Questionnaire (GHQ-28). To analyze the data, SPSS software version 26 and descriptive statistics tests, Pearson's correlation coefficient, ANOVA, and t-test were used to analyze the data. The tests were performed considering the confidence level of 95%.

The average overall score of general health was 20.1±11.7 and 77 (35%) of the students were suspected of having disorders in general health, and the average of physical subtests was 4.41±3.01, anxiety was 5.28 ± 3.88, social function was 6.90 ± 3.36 and depression was 3.55 ± 3.88. The statistical test showed a significant relationship between age and physical dimensions (P < 0.05). The statistically significant difference was found between the mean of physical sub-tests, anxiety, and total general health score with the type of gender (girl and boy) (P<0.05).

According to the findings, the general health of students in this period requires special attention to a significant extent, especially in the dimension of social performance. These critical conditions have had negative effects on the dimension of public health, especially girls, according to the present study, which requires special attention to the general health of female students in similar pandemics in the future.