This research was conducted as a descriptive and cross-sectional study to determine the effects of nursing students' liking of children and attitudes toward clinical practice on their comfort and worry levels in the pediatric clinic. The research was carried out with 270 nursing students who had already taken or were taking the child health and diseases nursing course. Data were collected using a Nursing Student Information Form, the Barnett Liking of Children Scale, the Nursing Students' Attitudes toward Clinical Practices Scale, and the Pediatric Nursing Student Clinical Comfort and Worry Assessment Tool. Mean values, percentage calculations, and linear regression analysis were used for the analysis of the research data. Participants' mean scores were 52.30 ± 6.16 on the Barnett Liking of Children Scale, 103.72 ± 19.35 on the Nursing Students' Attitudes toward Clinical Practices Scale, 15.61 ± 3.74 on the comfort sub-dimension, and 11.63 ± 4.32 on the worry sub-dimension of the Pediatric Nursing Student Clinical Comfort and Worry Assessment Tool. It was determined that the liking of children and attitudes toward clinical practice explained 43.6% of the clinical comfort level of pediatric nursing students in Model 1 and 45.2% of their clinical worry level in Model 2. It was determined that the liking of children and attitudes toward clinical practice significantly affected the comfort and worry levels of nursing students in the pediatric clinic.
Keywords: Nursing student; attitude; comfort; liking of children; practice; worry.