Effect of a Brief Seated Massage on Nursing Student Attitudes Toward Touch for Comfort Care

BACKGROUND: While massage has been removed from nursing curricula, studies have reported massage as safe and effective for stress reduction, relaxation, pain relief, fatigue, and quality of life. OBJECTIVE: To compare the efficacy of two intensities of touch administered during two seated massages on the attitudes of nursing students toward touch for their self-care and patient care. PARTICIPANTS: Nursing students who volunteered gave institutional review board-approved written informed consent to undergo massage by a licensed massage therapist. SETTINGS/LOCATION: A private room adjacent to the nursing lab in a school of nursing. INTERVENTION: Brief seated massages of differing intensities. Each participant received low-intensity and high-intensity touch in a two-block, randomized order, within-subjects design. Linear mixed models nested within subject and random intercept analyses were used to test hypotheses in this two-treatment, two-sequence, two-period crossover design. OUTCOME MEASURES: Health questionnaires/visual analogue scales pertaining to physical/affective/and attitudinal status were completed before and after each massage. RESULTS: Twenty-nine participants (93% female, 83% single) completed the study. Before massage, the optimal intensity of touch anticipated for self-comfort was 6.6 (0=no pressure;10=most intense pressure imaginable). The mean touch intensities were 6.7 for high-intensity massage and 0.5 for low-intensity (p<0.001). The overall percentage differences (feeling better or worse) following massage were as follows: low intensity, 37.5% better; high intensity, 62.7% better (p<0.001). Significantly more improvement was reported for energy, pain, stress, and feeling physically uptight after high-intensity compared with low-intensity (p<0.03). Participants were more likely to both receive touch for self-care and provide touch for patient care after experiencing high- versus low-intensity massage (p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: High-intensity seated massage was more efficacious than low-intensity massage and positively influenced nursing student attitudes toward the inclusion of massage in self-care/patient care. The role of touch for self-care/patient care in the nursing curricula merits reconsideration.