Stress Management for Students in Dental Education: A Scoping Review

Stress in the university setting is well-reported. This scoping review aims to synthesize and evaluate the current literature on stress in dental education to understand stress and stress-management interventions that have been trialed with dental students. Using the Arksey and O'Malley framework to organize this scoping review, a systematic search strategy was chosen with keywords to identify stress management within the dental student population. Several databases were searched: PubMed, Scopus, Dentistry and Oral Sciences Source, Cochrane, and Eric. The search terms included "students", "dentistry", "education", "management", and "stress". The review included only peer-reviewed articles published within the last 10 years (2014-2024). Included articles (n = 28) were organized by theme: (1) Problem-focused (prevalence and incidence of stress) (n = 4); (2) Factors influencing stress (socioeconomic, sociodemographic, sociopolitical, lifestyle factors, etc.) (n = 18); (3) Intervention-based (educational, support, movement, cognitive) (n = 6). The articles that were intervention-based were evaluated using the RE-AIM Framework, which covers five dimensions: Reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance. The literature review revealed a significant incidence of stress among dental students, yet there is a notable deficiency in robust research detailing effective interventions and their sustained impact on this demographic. Interventions fell under four main categories: Educational-based interventions (n = 1), support-based interventions (n = 1), movement-based interventions (n = 3), and cognitive-based interventions (n = 1). Overall, two intervention-based articles were randomized control trials, and two of the studies found significant changes in perceived stress levels or stress biomarkers. The findings underscore a need for further research in developing and testing effective stress-management interventions in dental students.