Purpose of the Study
The project purpose was to examine whether coloring mandalas during break increases heart rate variability and helps lower the anxiety state and characteristics among medical-surgical nurses and the healthcare support staff compared to normal activities.
Research & Design
The study used crossover pre- and posttest quasi-experimental design mixed method to conduct the research. Through the method, the principal investigator used flyers to notify each nurse in charge about the positions, goals and the inclusion design of the experiment. The notice allowed interested nurses to register in the any of the 45 positions announced (Patricia et.al., 2020). Additionally, the recruitment was done in unit meeting to encourage employees to participate in the exercise.
Sample
The study used forty subjects to participate in the research. The sample selection was guided by the need to achieve a 0.80 power that help in getting the significant variation of 20% anxiety state of pre-intervention and post intervention. Besides, the choice helps to detect a loss attrition of 20% (Patricia et.al., 2020). Qualified candidates included registered nurses, unit clerks, patient care practitioners and licensed nurses. The participants were selected through convenience, purposeful and snowball sampling method. The sample environment was set in a 43 bed medical surgical section of a 515-bed capacity urban teaching hospital in Northeastern United States.
Data Collection
Nurses and support employees completed the STAI-Form Y and the data completed in the form was collected and store online on the Mind Garden website. After all the participants filled the form, heart rate variability was recorded for five minutes on a computer.
- Data Analysis: The experiment used STAI-Form Y, to measure anxiety among the medical surgical nurses and their support staff. The instrument can identify temporary condition of a short-term state anxiety and state anxiety. In addition, the STAI-Form Y can produce a general and long-term characteristic of anxiety (Patricia et.al., 2020). The data was divided the forty responses into two sections each with twenty questions for easy and independent measure short-term state anxiety and characteristic anxiety.
- Limitations: Due to the small number of nurses and support staff in each medical surgical unit, the research outcome cannot generalize all the nurses. Moreover, the experiment did not collect historical anxiety data hence it did not identify the preexisting anxiety disorders of the subjects. Further, the nurse did a pretest that created bias in posttest answers. Lastly, the research failed to evaluate whether subjects showed anxiety reducing effects after the coloring mandalas activity stopped.
- Findings/Discussion: The study found out that heart rate variability increases after coloring mandalas activity. The experiment results indicated that coloring mandalas during work break increases heart rate variability and reduces anxiety in the short-term. In fact, according to the study, there is no big difference in short-term state anxiety and trait anxiety between coloring mandalas breaks and normal breaks (Patricia et.al., 2020). Therefore, the findings supports other studies that used heart rate variability and pulse rate to investigate impacts of coloring mandalas on anxiety reduction.
- Reading Research Literature: The literature review reveals that further research is needed on the effects of coloring mandalas on anxiety reduction. In fact, there is a need to explore impacts of various geometrical designs of the mandalas selected on anxiety of medical surgical nurses and other staff members. The study focused on coloring pre drawn mandala other than using original created mandalas during the process.
Reference
Patricia Maguire, M. A., Ann Coughlan, B. S. N., Hannah Lacko MA, C. S. S. B. B., & Jessie Reich, M. S. N. (2020). The effect of coloring mandalas on the anxiety of medical-surgical nurses and nursing support staff. Medsurg Nursing, 29(3), 192-199.