Interested to know more about stress management programs for student nurses? Then you're in the right place.

We talk to Becky Petley in this episode. Becky is finishing her Ph.D. at Winchester University in the UK and was investigating what aspects of wellbeing programs for student nurses actually work.

In this conversation we cover:

• Why it’s important to understand what elements of wellbeing programs are effective and not just whether the whole package ‘worked’.
• The moral imperative of organisations to implement culture change to support student nurses.
• How a flexible, and not a one-size fits all approach is needed to address student nurse stress.
• The context of attrition of student nurses – many (up to 33%!) drop out early from training. We discuss the obligation of organisations to address this.
• Some reasons why student nurses drop out.
• We discuss Becky’s review article and why she looked at stress specifically in student nurses.
• How stress interventions vary a lot. Becky talks us through the types that were most effective, such as those that involve training coping skills and ways of thinking about stress differently.
• Why future work needs to address coping but also helping reduce the actual things that are making students stressed (e.g. high placement demands and academic work, financial pressures)
• How expectations around professional identity clash with student nurses’ personal identity, sometimes leading to deteriorating wellbeing.
• Becky shares her advice for new nurses – to practice self-compassion and be kind to yourself.

Find her article here: “The effectiveness of interventions and behaviour change techniques to reduce stress in student nurses: A systematic review”. 

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