Aim: To describe nursing student self‐esteem changes over time and its impacts on learning strategies.Design: Existential phenomenology.Methods: Interviews were conducted in Spring 2018 in a purposive sample of 39 nursing students, exploring events critical to self‐esteem and their impacts. Transcriptions were analysed descriptively and interpretatively to decipher the process that links self‐esteem, events and learning behaviour.Results: What led to self‐esteem changes were “relationships with nurses during internships” and “receiving evaluations.” The students interpreted events and drew conclusions about their aptitude for nursing, which in turn prompted proactive or defensive learning behaviours. Their interpretations both depended on their self‐esteem and impacted it, in a vicious or virtuous circle. Exploring self‐esteem allows a better understanding of the importance of students' relationships with nursing teams, and of some of their defensive behaviours. Understanding the role of nursing student self‐esteem in the learning process could help improve student well‐being and competence.

AimThe aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of academic burnout (AB) and its associated factors among nursing and midwifery students during the COVID-19 pandemic. DesignA correlational cross-sectional study. MethodsAn online survey was distributed from November to December 2020 to nursing and midwifery students in Belgium. The risk of AB was assessed using the MBI-SS Academic Burnout Inventory scale. Factors associated with AB were related to the personal life and level of education of the student and to the COVID-19 pandemic. ResultsThe prevalence of overall AB risk was 50.0% (95% CI 48.5-53.1). Factors significantly associated with higher risk of AB were having a child, having a job, the level of academic training, working overtime, insufficient personal protective equipment against viral contamination during the last internship, work overload due to the pandemic, personal proven or possible SARS-CoV-2 infection and having a relative who died related to COVID-19.

Previous studies on the factors that can affect self-esteem and clinical skills during training among bachelor’s-level nursing students in Belgium have shown that internships – and evaluation and feedback moments, more specifically – were key points in that process. We did a study to better understand how students experience those moments and which specific aspects of feedback are involved. This article focuses on how feedback is experienced and on the consequences of that in terms of learning. Here we identify the aspects of feedback that can result in positive or negative experiences, with different implications for learning. Our findings highlight the key role that – along with valence – the focus and tone of feedback plays. In addition, students’ lived experience can heighten or dampen their motivation to act on feedback and affect how they regulate their learning behavior when feedback is experienced either positively or negatively. Generally speaking, students show resistance or rejection when feedback is experienced negatively. While these results are consistent with other studies, further research is needed to explore the emotional process at work in feedback processing.

Background: Self-esteem affects nursing students’ well-being and may impact their competence development. Nursing students appear to be at risk for low self-esteem, and their training may negatively impact that selfesteem. The existing research, with its controversies, methodological issues, and gaps, has failed to fully portray or explain this phenomenon. Mruk’s two-dimensional model of self-esteem offers an operative theoretical framework based on self-competence and self-liking. The model describes the nature of ‘selfesteem moments’ in which self-esteem changes. The aim of this study is to answer the question: “How does undergraduate nursing education influence students’ self-esteem, specifically regarding the development of their clinical competence?” Methods: A longitudinal design is needed to describe changes during undergraduate nursing education. A mixed methods study is required to measure and explain those changes, with a convergent, multiphase design. A nursing student cohort is created by accidental sampling in four Belgian high schools and followed for three years. Quantitative data including sociodemographic data, self-esteem (as measured by the Rosenberg scale and the Tafarodi & Swann scale), self-efficacy, and state anxiety (Spielberger scale) are collected each year. These data will be used to describe changes in self-esteem level and profile during nursing education. Multivariate analysis is used to identify correlated factors. Qualitative data are collected each year via semi-structured interviews with a cohort created by purposive sampling; content analysis is performed on that data(hermeneutic phenomenology) to identify themes using repetitions, similarities and differences, indigenous categories, and theory-related material. The quantitative and qualitative data are then combined into a meta-matrix. Discussion: The challenges encountered during study designing involved following the cohort while minimizing missing data, validating the French translation of a self-esteem scale using nursing students, and dealing with a large volume of data, especially when assembling it into a meta-matrix. The aim of the study is to help educational institutions tackle the self-esteem issue. Future studies might also compare nursing students to other students, explore the situation of dropouts, and evaluate self-esteem-related pedagogical devices. Trial Registration: This non-interventional study was approved by the ethics committee (Comitéd’ Éthique Hospitalo-Facultaire Universitaire de Liège (707)) and assigned reference no. 2017/233.