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POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access
P02.70. Feasibility and effect of chair massage
offered to nurses during working hours on stress
related symptoms: a pilot study
D Engen, B Bauer, A Vincent, C Luedtke, L Loehrer, S Cha, T Chon, L Dion, N Rodgers, D Wahner-Roedler
*
From International Research Congress on Integrative Medicine and Health 2012
Portland, Oregon, USA. 15-18 May 2012
Purpose
To assess the feasibility and effect of chair massage
offered to hospital nurses during working hours on
stress related symptoms.
Methods
Single arm study performed between 10/15/2010 and 12/
24/2010 at an academic medical center. A mass e-mail
was sent to all nurses working in an inpatient psychiatric
and an outpatient pain rehabilitation unit. The first 40
respondents were enrolled; two were excluded due to
missing enrollment data. A 15 minute chair massage
once a week for 10 weeks was provided by one of three
Certified Massage Therapists available 3 days a week.
Instruments used included the Perceived Stress Scale
(PSS-14), Smith Anxiety Scale (SAS), and Linear Analo-
gue Scale Assessment (LASA) scale. Mean and standard
deviations of PSS-14, SAS and LASA scores at baseline
and at 10 weeks were calculated and analyzed with the
paired t-test. Any p-value <0.05 was considered statisti-
cally significant.
Results
The median age of 38 participants (5 males, 33 females)
was 47 years (range 21-65). All participants completed the
3 instruments used at the beginning and end of the study.
Of 380 available massage appointments, 278 were used
(mean 7.13, range 1-10 massages per participant). Stress
related symptoms improved as follows: the mean PSS-14
score decreased from 17.85 to 14.92 (p=0.0015), and the
mean SAS score from 49.45 to 40.95 (p<0.0001). The
mean LASA score increased from 42.39 to 44.84
(p=0.0055). Thirty participants (78.95%) felt that their
overall job satisfaction improved because of the massages,
and 23 (60.53%) were willing to pay $10 to $25 for a 15
minute chair massage if available at work.
Conclusion
Offering chair massages for nurses in a psychiatric/pain
rehabilitation unit during working hours - although diffi-
cult to do due to busy clinical schedules - reduced stress
related symptoms significantly and was highly appreciated
by the nurses.
Published: 12 June 2012
doi:10.1186/1472-6882-12-S1-P126
Cite this article as: Engen et al.: P02.70. Feasibility and effect of chair
massage offered to nurses during working hours on stress related
symptoms: a pilot study. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
2012 12(Suppl 1):P126.
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Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA
Engen et al.BMC Complementary and Alternative
Medicine 2012, 12(Suppl 1):P126
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/12/S1/P126
© 2012 Engen et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (http://creativec ommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.