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.