Psychoeducational interventional programme during the COVID‐19 pandemic for nurses with severe occupational stress: A randomized controlled trial.

Background: Occupational stress is generally acknowledged as a major issue in the health sector that may have a detrimental impact on nurses' psychological and physical health, particularly during the COVID‐19 epidemic. Aim: This study evaluated the effectiveness of a psychoeducational interventional programme in decreasing occupational stress and improving coping methods among nurses during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Methods: This study used a cluster‐randomized approach. Data were collected from 80 nurses working in two public health‐care centres from May to August 2020 in Jordan. Two centres were assigned randomly to the intervention and control groups. The psychoeducational programme was delivered to the intervention group in six sessions over 6 days for 2 weeks. The collected data were analysed using SPSS through descriptive and inferential statistics. Occupational stress and coping strategies were measured. Results: Repeated‐measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the degrees of occupational stress and coping strategies significantly differed between study groups over the three points of data collection. Conclusion: This psychoeducational interventional programme is a valuable noninvasive method that can improve individual coping strategies to manage stress in practice during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Summary statement: What is already known about this topic?: Nurses face high degrees of occupational stress throughout the COVID‐19 pandemic.Nurses are vulnerable to mental and physical health problems because of the high degrees of stress.Current evidence of the effectiveness of psychoeducational programmes on occupational stress and coping strategies is limited due to a lack of well‐designed randomized trials. What this paper adds?: This psychoeducational interventional programme can effectively reduce occupational stress and improve coping strategies among nurses in clinical settings during the COVID‐19 pandemic.The results of this study are expected to serve as a guide for nursing leaders and policymakers to modify plans, procedures and protocols to utilize effective stress‐preventive strategies for nurses and occupational stress management during the COVID‐19 pandemic.The study can help nursing educators develop an efficient clinical education plan that addresses the needs of nurses and students to manage future occupational stress appropriately. The implications of this paper: This study can help nurses improve individual coping strategies to manage occupational stress in clinical practice during the COVID‐19 pandemic.This research can inform future researchers who would like to study the same issue in another context and use a qualitative approach for in‐depth analysis.This study offers nursing educators, including clinical nursing instructors, lecturers and other academic faculty staff, a better understanding regarding occupational stress among nursing staff in clinical practice and their coping strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]