Incorporating Holistic Wellness and Stress Education Into the Undergraduate Anatomy and Physiology Classroom

The transition to university comes with a range of new pressures for undergraduate students. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health disorders were commonly reported among post-secondary students and unfortunately, psychosocial challenges have become more apparent through the pandemic. Although academic and wellness resources are available on campuses, most post-secondary students feel that more institutional resources are needed, yet funding for wellness programs are susceptible to cuts as universities cope with budget constraints. To help ease this first year transition, in partnership with our Academic Skills, Student Wellness, and International Student Centres, we developed a suite of 15-minute holistic in class support sessions called the Mind Matters Mini-Sessions (3M Sessions). These sessions covered a range of topics relevant to the first-year experience (e.g. stress coping strategies, time management, resilience, sleep hygiene, food insecurity) and were piloted in our large, first-year Human Anatomy course. As we now redesign our first-year Human Anatomy and Physiology courses, we are working to supplement these 3M sessions by incorporating stress physiology and coping strategies into the curriculum with the goals of simultaneously improving student well-being, student understanding of physiology core concepts, and promoting student development of physiology and premed competencies. Topics such as stress-induced effects on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, sympathetic nervous system, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination, etc. will be discussed in their respective lectures on that physiological system and explored in a more integrative manner in the lab setting. Briefly, labs will be designed to include activities that explore the impact of stress (mental arithmetic) in student participants on physiological functions (e.g. heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, body temperature, blood glucose, salivary cortisol, and galvanic skin response), and culminate in a hypothesis-driven lab experiment that uses this same equipment to determine the impact of stress coping mechanisms (e.g. meditation) on these stress-induced physiological responses. We will discuss student feedback on the piloted 3M sessions and welcome discussion on our plan to incorporate stress physiology and coping strategies into the Anatomy & Physiology course curriculum. Overall, it is hoped that these curriculum changes will simultaneously connect students with campus and at home resources to manage stress while helping them to understand the physiology of stress management. Through stress-based lab experiments, students will gain competencies in scientific reasoning and critical thinking and an appreciation for the interdependence of physiological systems. Most importantly, it is hoped that students will become better learners who are equipped to succeed in post-secondary education, and as a result, create more well-rounded graduates. American Physiological Society Teaching Enhancement Award, Trent University Wickerson Foundation Fund This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.