Effectiveness of stress management training for nurses working in a burn treatment unit

All fourteen nurses working in a burn unit were given three hours of individual training in cognitive behavioral stress management skills. Anxiety measures were obtained before, during, and after training by weekly administration of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and by daily administration of a nurses' stress scale constructed for this study. Nurses were randomly assigned to two groups which were treated using a successive-groups time-series design. Results suggested that stress management training was effective in reducing work-related anxiety among inexperienced nurses but not among experienced nurses. The gains made by the inexperienced nurses may have been more associated with increases in their understanding of stress and their feelings of control over stress than with changes in their actual stress management behavior.