Background: Effective advocacy on self-care and the enhancement of a sense of coherence among nurses don't only benefit control over one's health and personal performance, but it may have a direct impact on clinical care and on the entire healing system. In this regard, nursing curricula grounded on a salutogenic model of health (SMH) operate with strategies to engage students in self-care and contribute to improving their mental health and wellbeing. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between self-care agency and a sense of coherence as dependent variables and the age and self-reported academic performance as independent variables in nursing assistant students.
Methods: For this cross-sectional study, data were collected from a full sample of 921 Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) Spanish students. A self-administered questionnaire, including sociodemographic variables, the 'appraisal of self-care agency' (ASA), and the 'sense of coherence' (SOC) constructs, was administered.
Results: Older participants presented significantly stronger values of both constructs. Apart from a significant and positive correlation between ASAS and SOC, ANOVA analyses indicate significant differences in terms of academic performance according to different ASAS and SOC degrees.
Conclusions: The findings of this study endorse the assumption that there is a consistent relationship between ASA and SOC constructs that might, indeed, have a potential effect on students' academic performance. In practical terms, it seems relevant to try to recognise the students' self-care agency and the sense of coherence as forceful predictive variables of mental health and wellbeing, in addition to academic success as a strength implied in the future career achievement.
Keywords: certified nursing assistant; mental health; nurse; salutogenic model of health; self-care; sense of coherence; students.