Abstract
IntroductionCaring for dying patients is one of the job stressors. Nurses in intensive care units are among the medical staff who have a close interaction with dying patients. Studies have shown that psychological interventions are very helpful in improving thinking about death and its problems. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the effect of Inquiry-Based Stress Reduction on mortality awareness and interpersonal problems among intensive care unit nurses in southeastern Iran.Materials and methodsThis was a Quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design in southeast of Iran in 2021. Nurses were selected using the convenience sampling method and divided into intervention (n = 32) and control (n = 35) groups using the block randomization method. The intervention group received a two-hour Inquiry-Based Stress Reduction counseling session every week for 6 weeks. Data were gathered using Multidimensional Mortality Awareness Measure and Inventory of Interpersonal Problems before, immediately after, and 6 weeks after the intervention. IBM SPSS Statistics software version 25 was used for data analysis.ResultsIn the intervention group, the mean scores of Mortality Awareness before, immediately after, and 6 weeks after the intervention were 130.41 ± 5.91, 164.47 ± 8.66, and 163.91 ± 9.29, respectively. Therefore, in the intervention group, the increase of Mortality Awareness mean score was statistically significant (P < 0.001). In the control group, the mean scores of Mortality Awareness before, immediately after, and 6 weeks after intervention were 129.63 ± 5.59, 135.26 ± 11.14, and 132.66 ± 5.62, respectively. Difference between the two groups was significant (P < 0.001). The results also showed that in the intervention group the mean scores of Interpersonal Problems immediately after and 6 weeks after the intervention were lower than before the intervention (P < 0.001). In the control group, Interpersonal Problems increased over time (P < 0.001). Accordingly, the difference between the two groups in terms of Interpersonal Problems during the study was statistically significant (P < 0.001).ConclusionThe study results suggest that the Inquiry-Based Stress Reduction is an appropriate intervention method to improve mortality awareness and reduce interpersonal problems in intensive care unit nurses.
Highlights
Caring for dying patients is one of the job stressors
The study results suggest that the Inquiry-Based Stress Reduction is an appropriate intervention method to improve mortality awareness and reduce interpersonal problems in intensive care unit nurses
The results showed that there were no significant differences between the two intervention and control groups in terms of gender, marital status, education, income, work experience in a clinical environment, work experience in an ICU, type of work shift, type of intensive care unit, position, faces with life-threatening illness, and having the experience of seeing another person’s death
Summary
Caring for dying patients is one of the job stressors. Nurses in intensive care units are among the medical staff who have a close interaction with dying patients. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of Inquiry-Based Stress Reduction on mortality awareness and interpersonal problems among intensive care unit nurses in southeastern Iran. Caring for dying patients is one of the job stressors, which due to the constant contact of nurses with these patients, they are exposed to this type of stressor [2]. Due to the nature of their job, nurses deal with the concept of death more than other people. If nurses consider death to be a frightening and sinister issue, they will not be able to deal with the death of patients calmly and effectively [4]
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