Background: Each year thousands of students across the country apply to nurse anesthesia programs. Due to the rigorous nature of the nurse anesthesia concentration, only a select few are accepted to each program. Nurse anesthesia school is highly stressful, and it is important to identify and decrease these stressors to ensure successful completion of the program. Purpose: The aim of this project was to evaluate whether providing an onboarding simulation day to first-year registered nurse anesthetist students prior to matriculation would decrease their stress levels. Methods: A quantitative design was used for this study. Participants for the intervention group were incoming first-year registered nurse anesthetist students. The control group consisted of current first-year registered nurse anesthetist students. Both groups attend the nurse anesthesia concentration at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Students participated in the same pre- and post-intervention survey that evaluated school-related, personal-related, and other stressors on a 5-point Likert scale. Results: A single ANOVA, f-tests, and t-tests were conducted, and 13 questions were analyzed. The overall stress score did not show a significance between the pre-intervention (M=3.00, SD=0.78) and post-intervention groups (M=2.86, SD=0.87); however, there was a statically significant improvement between the control (M=3.56, SD=0.75) and post-intervention groups (M=2.86, SD=0.87). Conclusion: My study suggests that providing first-year registered nurse anesthesia students an onboarding experience could be an effective way to decrease overall student stress scores
