**5. Conclusions**

When exposure to sources of stress is unavoidable, individuals have no choice but to rely on protective factors and coping strategies to maintain their QoL. The present study showed that some of these factors and strategies were indeed strongly associated with QoL in a sample of French nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic, whether they worked at hospitals or care institutions or in private practice. Interventions targeted to help nurses seek more social support, and use acceptance and positive reframing strategies could help preserve or increase their QoL. Based on our results, experimental studies might be developed to assess the causality of the observed associations. Additionally, the identification of nurses' QoL protective factors should be expanded to organizational or environmental factors, other countries, and other domains of practice to develop recommendations specific to the context of nursing practice.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the future will likely hold new challenges, such as natural disasters and new diseases. Again, nurses will have to face these challenges on the frontline. It is thus of paramount importance that measures are taken to help them protect their QoL during stressful events.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, P.D., I.G., A.O.B. and C.O.B.; data curation, J.J.; formal analysis, J.J. and I.G.; investigation, J.J., P.D., I.G., A.O.B. and C.O.B.; methodology, P.D., I.G., A.O.B. and C.O.B.; project administration, C.O.B.; supervision, P.D., I.G., A.O.B. and C.O.B.; validation, P.D. and I.G.; visualization, J.J.; writing—original draft, J.J., P.D. and I.G.; writing—review and editing, J.J., P.D., I.G., A.O.B. and C.O.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, because it was not subject to the French law on human research.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to the presence of health information.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to thank the Ordre National des Infirmiers for their invaluable support in promoting of the study.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
