we aimed at assessing the relationship between self-efficacy and levels of anxiety and stress of nursing students about their first clinical practice. This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at a nursing department of a foundation university in Istanbul with participation of 49 volunteer students, who had no clinical experience, between October and December 2012. The data were collected before and after clinical practice with two data collection forms prepared by the researchers, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Pagana Clinical Stress Questionnaire and General Self-Efficacy Scale, and were analyzed with Paired Sample t test, Kruskal Wallis test, Mann Whitney U test and Pearson correlation test. We found that total clinical stress questionnaire scores were below average after the first day (28.6±8.86) (lower clinical stress), and the self-efficacy mean scores were higher (70.4±7.67) (higher self-efficacy), and there are a negative correlation between self-efficacy and trait anxiety total scores before and after clinical practice (p<0,05); a negative correlation between self-efficacy and state anxiety total scores after clinical practice (p<0.05), and no significant correlation between the self-efficacy and clinical stress total scores (p>0.05). In conclusion, students’ self-efficacy levels increase with decreasing anxiety and the self-efficacy and stress of clinical practice have no interrelation. We suggest that anxiety of students should be decreased in teaching and practising the clinical skills.

Keywords: nursing students, clinical stress, self efficacy