Post-COVID-19 quality of life trajectories in chiropractic health professional students in the context of institutional wellbeing interventions in Aotearoa New Zealand

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted health professional education, with lasting effects on student wellbeing. Following documented post-lockdown declines in quality of life (QOL) among chiropractic students in Aotearoa New Zealand, targeted wellbeing programs were implemented to support institutional recovery. Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey data were collected, March–April 2024, and compared across time points (2019, 2022, 2024) and against New Zealand normative values. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests compared data with norms, and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests compared between-cohort, with effect sizes reported as rank-biserial correlations. One hundred and fourteen students (25.2 ± 5.5 years, 59.0% female) were compared with 276 pre-COVID (25.6 ± 5.2 years, 51.1% female) and 120 post-COVID (25.1 ± 6.0 years, 60.8% female) datasets. QOL declined markedly in 2022, with partial recovery by 2024. Improvements were most evident in Role Emotional (Year 4: 21.6 to 76.4, p < .001), Emotional Wellbeing (Year 4: 50.7 to 73.8, p < .001), and Energy and Fatigue (Year 4: 27.0 to 52.3, p < .001). However, scores generally remained below 2019 levels, and Pain scores remained markedly lower than population norms. By 2024, chiropractic students’ QOL had improved compared with post-COVID levels but had not fully returned to pre-pandemic values. While institutional and environmental factors may have supported partial recovery, persistent deficits in bodily pain experienced and reduction in energy and fatigue highlight the need for ongoing targeted support. These findings suggest that low-cost institutional wellbeing programs may have supported QOL recovery, though causality cannot be inferred from this design.