Chronic stress may be ready for its closeup. , it has been quietly hovering in plain sight, desperate for us to pay attention—individually and as a society—to its important and increasingly alarming message: something needs to change.
Our inattention comes at a cost. On an individual level, if we ignore our own stress for too long, we develop digestive issues, heart disease, weight gain, stroke, and more. As a society, our ongoing dismissal can act like gravity in an avalanche, and the accumulation of individuals’ stress can begin to affect the economic, political, and social structures meant to support us.
In the healthcare sector, the most vulnerable individuals are often nurses. Unmanaged stress can lead to negative outcomes for nurses and patients, including increased risk for medical errors, job burnout, turnover rates, and significantly higher rates of suicide in nurses compared to the general public. by placing additional burden on nursing students and nurses.
At the ̽̽ College of Nursing and Health Sciences (CNHS), faculty are educating students about tools they can use to effectively manage stress before they enter the workforce. Eager to address rising rates of provider burnout, Osher Center for Integrative Health Affiliates and Clinical Associate Professors Lili Martin, D.N.P., RN and Rebecca Nagle, D.N.P., APRN co-created the class Compassionate Care for Nurses in 2022 to provide undergraduate nursing students tools to optimize their mental health.
Now, enrollment has more than doubled and demand is growing. “The students love this class,” said Martin, at a recent session held at the Osher Center’s space on South Prospect Street in Burlington. Martin reflected, “It’s incredibly gratifying to see how much it helps them in all aspects of their lives.”
See What’s Working
Compassionate Care for Nurses is offered in a hybrid format and gives students an experiential understanding of how stress affects mental health and well-being. By participating in a variety of evidence-based, integrative strategies like meditation, mindfulness, yoga, tai chi, forest bathing, culinary medicine, Nia dance, and more, they begin to create their own stress-relief habits that will support them throughout their lives and in their work.
Martin and Nagle collect data before and after the course and are cheered by its impact: the data shows statistically significant decreases in nursing student stress levels and increased resiliency.
“I learned new strategies for my everyday life to help my mental health and overall wellbeing,” one student wrote, echoing the copious qualitative data supporting the statistics.
At the end of the packed Nia class, after joyful movement and music, students were more effusive with their praise. “I feel so energized! But also really peaceful,” one student said, “like I can just be in my body.” The other students expressed similar feeling, as they packed up to head to their next classes, labs, assignments, and all the responsibilities they are learning to juggle.
The success of the Compassionate Care for Nurses course led to the development of two similar nursing courses. One is a two-credit online version of the course, set to run in Summer 2025, for graduate nursing students called Cultivating Mindfulness and Compassion.
For the other course, Martin and Nagle partnered with local entrepreneur, Roxanne Scully, a Certified Vipassana Meditation teacher. Together, they created the three-credit short-term travel study version of the course that ran in Puerto Rico over Spring Break 2024 titled The Intersection of Mindfulness, Compassion, and Planetary Health. Students were immersed in mindfulness education and strategies while exploring the link between mindfulness, compassion, and planetary health.
“Lili and Rebecca’s work is so impactful,” said Cara Feldman-Hunt, associate director of ̽̽’s Osher Center, “not only because it offers each student the deep benefits of experiential education, but because it is building the evidence that will influence curricula, policy, and change how we think about what health and healthcare really are.”
Look to the Future
Their work is also critical at a time when ‘keep calm and carry on’ and ‘fake it until you make it,’ aren’t working.
, the American Psychological Society’s inspection of pre- and post-pandemic mental and physical health, reveals “a nation recovering from collective trauma.” The data suggests the long-term stress sustained since the Covid-19 pandemic began has had a significant impact on well-being, evidenced by an increase in chronic illnesses—which jumped from 48 percent in 2019 to 58 percent in 2023—and mental health diagnoses—from 31percent reported in 2019 to 45 percent in 2023, in adults ages 35 to 44. Adults ages 18 to 34 reported an historically high rate of mental illnesses at 50 percent in 2023.
The field of Integrative Healthcare, which reaffirms the relationship between practitioner and patient, focuses on the whole person, and orchestrates evidence-based therapeutic approaches, is uniquely suited to confront these statistics.
Osher Center Affiliates like Martin and Nagle are leading the way. They are working on developing Compassionate Care for Nurses as a required course within the undergraduate nursing curriculum and are exploring grant funding to make travel study more accessible. Through it all, they are giving their students the tools they need to support their mental health ongoing and to manage stress before it becomes chronic.
Compassionate Care for Nurses, offered this Spring, is poised to positively impact the next generation of healthcare providers—and the patients they treat.