Effects of Tellington touch in healthy adults awaiting venipuncture

Many natural-healing modalities administered by professional nurses are provided without adequate scientific scrutiny. Tellington touch (TTouch), a form of gentle physical touch originally developed for the calming of horses, is an emerging nursing intervention. However, the safety and efficacy of human TTouch has not yet been established. The purpose of this study, which used a pretest, posttest repeated-measures control group design, was to identify patterns of mean blood pressure (MBP), heart rate (HR), state anxiety (SA), and procedural pain (PP) in healthy adults receiving a 5-min intervention of TTouch (n = 47) just before venipuncture versus a no-touch control group (n = 46). There were statistically and clinically significant decreases in the TTouch group in MBP and HR. There were no significant differences between groups in SA and PP. Further research is essential to determine the safety and efficacy of this modality for acutely or critically ill patients.