The Effect of the Emotional Freedom Technique on Students

Overview

Introduction: The interruption of education within the scope of quarantine and isolation methods during the pandemic process has caused nursing students studying in clinical practice areas to be away from the clinic for a long time. This situation not only affected the anxiety levels of nursing students, but also caused them to feel inadequate and to experience stress. Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of emotional freedom technique on nursing students' styles of coping with anxiety and stress. Method:In this experimentally designed study with pretest-posttest control group, freedom of emotion technique will be applied to the experimental group for 4 sessions. In the pre-implementation phase and after the emotional freedom technique session, the state anxiety scale, coping styles scale, and subjective discomfort level scale will be applied.

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), a type of energy that has been applied recently, is a technique applied by touching meridian points to provide anxiety, depression, burnout, stress management, and desensitization to fear. The basic principle of EFT is to send activation and deactivation signals to the brain by stimulating points on the skin with different electrical properties, usually by touching them. The findings obtained from the studies show that this technique, which is a psychotherapeutic technique and provides cognitive restructuring, has statistically significant improvements at the rate of 98% in the management of psychological problems. Studies show that this approach is positive in coping with stress when considered in a wide range. Church et al. revealed that self-administered EFT provides significant improvements in anxiety, depression, pain and craving scores. A large therapeutic effect for EFT was reported in a meta-analysis of 14 randomized controlled trials using the EFT technique for anxiety disorders. In the studies, it was aimed to apply this application, which has proven positive results, to apply the emotional freedom technique in order to reduce the anxiety experienced by the students due to the reasons such as distance education and clinical education during the COVID-19 pandemic process and to enable them to cope with stress. research questions This study aims to address the following research questions: What are the anxiety levels of the students who applied the emotional freedom technique (EFT)? What are the stress coping styles of the students who applied emotional freedom technique (EFT)?