The inhalation effects of aroma essential oil on stress of shift nurses

37^th Asia-Pacific Nursing and Medicare Summit

OCTOBER 20-21, 2017 OSAKA, JAPAN

Myung Haeng Hur and Yu Jin Lee

Eulji University, Republic of Korea

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Adv Practice Nurs

Abstract :

Introduction & Aim: A nurse is an expert who needs to take care of a patient, for 24 hours a day, so shift work is absolutely essential. A shift work nurses tend to become physically and mentally unstable due to frequent change of sleep patterns. If instability persists, there is highly likelihood of reducing the nursing care quality care and efficiency in work. Recently, many intervention studies have been actively conducted to reduce stress and improve sleep and immunity. Aromatherapy is one of the complementary alternative therapies that are convenient and easy to apply. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of experiment treatment on stress of shift nurses. Method: The study is a randomized controlled study to investigate the effects of aroma essential oil inhalation therapy on stress, stress index and cortisol for working shift nurses. 27 nurses in the experimental group were asked to inhale aromatherapy essential oils before sleeping. And then, 23 control subjects were allowed to sleep without any treatment. Nurses in both groups were measured the perceived stress and cortisol on the first and third days of work after sleep. The statistical program used SPSS win 24.0. The homogeneity test of general characteristics and dependent variable was analyzed by x2 and t-test, the stress and cortisol before and after experimental treatment were analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA. Results: The perceived stress score was significantly different at 3rd day after experimental treatment (t=-7.893, p<.001). The serum cortisol between the experimental group and the control group was not significantly different before the experimental treatment (t=-0.268, p=0.790), but was significantly different on the 3rd day after the experimental treatment (t=-3.829, p<0.001). Conclusion: This study showed that inhalation of aromatherapy essential oil which was blending Lavender, ylandylang and neroli as 4:2:1 ratio was effective in lowering the stress level and lowering the serum cortisol level of the shift nurse.

Biography :

Myung Haeng Hur has her expertise in women’s health nursing, nursing research and CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine), especially aromatherapy. She is a Nurse and has her interested in women's health nursing. Her research mainly focuses on women's health, hypertension, stress relief, sleep enhancement and immune enhancement. She is an Aromatherapist, trained in IFPA. She has published more than 60 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as a Reviewer Member of Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing.