Students, Stress, and the Pandemic: An Occupational Health Perspective for Nursing Education

Nursing students have high risk factors for stress, and the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic underscored weaknesses in mitigating nursing student stress and supporting well-being. Occupational health uses proven frameworks and perspectives for understanding and mitigating health risks, and promoting worker wellness. Nurse educators can draw from this knowledge to implement system-level changes in support of a safe and healthy learning environment.

This article describes the use of an occupational health strategy to create healthier educational environments.

Applying occupational health concepts to nursing education supports honest appraisal of mental health dangers to students, offers keys to managing student health risks, and provides effective approaches for communicating risks with mitigation tactics.

An occupational health and safety perspective creates a lens through which nursing stress resulting from the pandemic can be viewed and managed creatively using a holistic approach to mitigate harm from stress in the nursing educational setting. [.