VITAL SIGNS
Mental Wellbeing on Next Gen
Michelle Galles, DNP, PHHNP-BC, AGACNP-BC
Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Texas State University
Nurses are routinely exposed to intense emotional, physical, and psychological demands that can contribute to burnout, compassion fatigue, and post-traumatic stress related to secondary trauma.
Recognizing these realities and the growing need to strengthen mental health and resiliency among healthcare professionals, faculty in the mental health nursing course at Texas State University sought to introduce a learning experience that would equip students with practical resiliency skills they could carry into future nursing practice. The goal was to support students’ personal well-being while also providing them with an optional wellness tool they could share with patients, co-workers, families, and friends experiencing similar stressors. This need led to a collaborative partnership between Texas State University faculty and Operation Get Out (OGO), connecting nursing education with OGO’s mission of promoting healing, restoration, and resilience through intentional outdoor and water-based wellness experiences.
The decision to provide students with an educational activity focused on building resiliency is supported by growing evidence that stress, burnout, and mental health concerns often begin before nurses enter professional practice. Prelicensure nursing students commonly experience significant stress related to academic demands, clinical placement expectations, patient care responsibilities, and interactions with faculty and healthcare staff. These stressors can affect well-being, coping, academic performance, and professional readiness, making nursing education an important point for early prevention rather than delayed intervention.
Research on healthcare professionals also shows that repeated exposure to suffering, trauma, grief, and high-stress clinical situations can contribute to compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and reduced professional quality of life.
Building Wellness Cultures
National nursing education guidance further reinforces the importance of this approach. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing identifies personal, professional, and leadership development as an essential domain in nursing education and calls for learning activities and reflection that foster personal health, resilience, self-care, well-being, and leadership. AACN also encourages schools of nursing to move beyond crisis response by building wellness cultures, offering resiliency programming, and implementing evidence-based strategies that address stress, anxiety, depression, and overall well-being among students, faculty, and staff.
Research on healthcare professionals also shows that repeated exposure to suffering, trauma, grief, and high-stress clinical situations can contribute to compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and reduced professional quality of life. Interventions that teach coping, emotional regulation, self-compassion, mindfulness, resilience, and wellness practices have shown promise in reducing burnout and compassion fatigue while improving satisfaction and well-being among nurses and other healthcare workers. Introducing these skills while students are still developing their professional identity may help normalize self-care, strengthen coping capacity, and prepare graduates to enter high-acuity healthcare environments with practical tools for sustaining themselves and supporting others.
Intentional outdoor and water-based wellness experiences build skills such as partnership and resilience.
Operation Get Out provides access to restorative outdoor experiences to groups including nurses and first responders.
Resilience as a Professional Skill
To translate this evidence into practice, the experiential “Changing Tides” activity was created in alignment with current objectives of the course. The event gave students an opportunity to practice resilience, reflection, connection, and nervous system regulation in a structured setting outside the traditional classroom. In addition to intentional outdoor and water-based wellness experiences, the activity introduced students to the realities of prehospital care, interdisciplinary communication, and collaborative relationships among nurses, first responders, and other healthcare professionals. In this way, Changing Tides reinforced that resilience is not simply a concept to be discussed, but a professional skill that can be practiced, evaluated, and carried forward into nursing care.
Operation Get Out provided a natural partner for this work. As an Austin-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, OGO promotes mental, emotional, and physical wellness through intentional outdoor and water-based experiences. Rooted in the belief that time spent in, on, or near water can support calm, clarity, nervous system regulation, healing, resilience, restoration, and connection, OGO offers activities such as paddleboarding, boating, fishing, cycling, hiking, retreats, and community wellness events. The organization serves a broad range of individuals and groups, including first responders, military members, nurses, frontline workers, people experiencing grief or trauma, families of fallen heroes, and those who may not otherwise have access to restorative outdoor experiences. Within nursing education, this partnership supports experiential learning by combining “calm” activities grounded in Blue Mind theory with “chaos” activities related to emergency care, flight nursing, prehospital management, and water rescue, allowing students to explore how intentional exposure to nature and water can support personal wellness while preparing them for high-stress healthcare environments. TN
