ABSTRACT
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.