Healing Touch: A Strategy for Acute Care Nurses' Stress Reduction.
J Holist Nurs
; 41(4): 347-359, 2023 Dec.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36714962
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study is to determine whether administering healing touch (HT) is more effective than deep breathing (DB) for reducing acute care nurses' stress during a shift. A randomized cluster trial assessed 150 nurses' vital signs and Visual Analog Scale for Stress (VASS) levels pre, post, and at follow-up to achieve a power of .7 and medium affect size. Open-ended questions following the intervention enriched quantitative findings describing the experience, facilitators, and barriers to potential use in nursing. The generalized estimating equation 1 (GEE1) comparisons of mean change over time, found that nurses in the HT intervention, had significantly lower VASS stress scores at posttreatment (-0.95, p = .0002) and at follow-up (-0.73, p = .0144) than the DB group, and the respiratory rate (RR) rate differences were nearly significant at post-intervention and significant at follow-up, respectively (1.36, p = .0568 and -2.28, p = .0011), indicating lower RR after HT. These findings support the use of HT as an effective stress reduction strategy as a relevant strategy to sustain a viable nurse work force post-COVID-19.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Therapeutic Touch
/
Occupational Stress
/
Nurses
Type of study:
Clinical_trials
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
J Holist Nurs
Journal subject:
ENFERMAGEM
Year:
2023
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States