Preliminary Study for the Development of the Structural Psychological Support Group for Nurses

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a psychological group support program for stress management of nurses. The participants belonged to a medical school hospital in Japan. 17 nurses in the head and neck ward participated in our intervention program. All nurses were women, their mean age was 30.2 years and their average working life was 9.5 years. One intervention group had 4 or 5 participants and 5 weekly sessions. One session was 90 minutes long. We planed the contents of our program based on the Trans-Theoretical Model (TTM). Since the theory claims that different intervention is needed for different stages of behavioural changes, we firstly assessed the participants' stage of readiness for stress management to reduce their job-related stress. Most of all participants were on active and maintenance stage. Therefore, we focused on maintaining and enhancing the nurses' self-efficacy for managing their own stress whilst caring for patients. The contents of the program were : emotional support, cognitive reframing, providing psychological knowledge, enhancing self-efficacy, and relaxation training. We compared scores of psychological measurements between pre-and post-intervention. Mood status, self-efficacy and active coping style were significantly improved after the intervention. These results implied that our intervention would be psychologically efficacious for changing nurses' stress management behavior. Also there was significant improvement of perception for inter-colleague relationship. We discussed the process of development, efficacy and feasibility of the intervention program.