The Effect of Emotional Freedom Technique on Perceived Stress and General Self-Efficacy in Nursing Students

The study was designed to be randomly controlled. Block randomization method was used to determine the intervention and control groups. Randomization was done by a biostatistician outside the researcher. 50 nursing students were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups. The study was carried out in three stages with three EFT applications, applied for approximately 20-30 minutes, at 7-day intervals. In the first stage, students who met the inclusion criteria were identified by interviewing students who thought they had a fear of childbirth. After informed consent was obtained from the students and pretest data were collected, they were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. EFT application was applied to those in the intervention group. No intervention was made for the control group. Data was collected twice for the intervention group, before the first EFT application (pretest) and after the last EFT application (posttest). The control group was also tested at the first interview and again 3 weeks later. The applications were carried out face to face with the students as a group. For the collection of research data, "Descriptive Information Form", "General Self-Efficacy (GSE) Scale", "Perceived Stress Scale" and "The Subjective Units of Distress (SUD) Scale" were used.

• Emotional Freedom Technique (Other): Emotional freedom techniques is a psychophysiological intervention that combines psychological methods from traditional therapies with somatic stimulation. EFT involves tapping acupuncture points to desensitize negative emotions by focusing on the emotion.

Primary outcomes

• General Self-Efficacy Scale [Change from The General Self-Efficacy Scale at three weeks]: The scale consists of 10 items. It is scored between 1-4 and the lowest 10 and the highest 40 points can be obtained.
• Perceived Stress Scale [Change from The Perceived Stress Scale at three weeks]: The scale consists of 14 items. It is scored between 0-4 and the lowest 0 and the highest 56 points can be obtained.
• The Subjective Units of Distress Scale [Change from The Subjective Units of Distress Scale at three weeks]: It is an 11-point scale commonly used as a subjective verbal rating of discomfort, where 0 indicates absence of discomfort and 10 indicates that it is intolerable.

Sex: Female, ages: 18 Years to 40 Years, accepts healthy volunteers

Inclusion Criteria:

* Female students who were taking the Obstetrics and Gynecology Nursing course at the Faculty of Nursing, who volunteered to participate in the study, and who thought they had a fear of childbirth were included in the study.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Female students who did not take the Obstetrics and Gynecology Nursing course at the Faculty of Nursing, did not volunteer to participate in the study, and did not think they had a fear of childbirth were not included in the study.

• Halime Esra Meram, PhD, Study director, Selcuk University