Assessing intervention effectiveness for reducing stress in student nurses: quantitative systematic review

Aims To identify the types of interventions that are effective in reducing stress in student nurses, and to make recommendations for future research. Background Student nurses experience significant stress during their training and this may contribute to sickness, absence and attrition. Given the global shortage of nurses and high drop-out rates amongst trainees, the importance for developing stress management programmes for student nurses is becoming more evident. To date, only one review has examined the effectiveness of stress interventions for student nurses, but the emergence of recent literature warrants a new review. Data Sources Research papers published between April 1981 and April 2008 were identified from the following databases: Medline, CINAHL, Behavioral Sciences Collection, IBSS and Psychinfo. Review Methods A systematic review with narrative analysis was conducted. Key terms included ‘nurses OR nursing OR nurse’, ‘student OR students’, ‘intervention’, ‘stress OR burnout’. In addition to database searches, reference lists of selected papers were scanned, key authors were contacted and manual searches of key journals were conducted.