The Effect of Aromatherapy Use in Nursing Skills Training

Overview

Nursing education is an education in which theory and practice are intertwined and requires the development of both cognitive and motor skills of students. The laboratory environment is a bridge between classroom learning and clinical practice. In order for students to transform the target behavior into a skill, it takes place in the laboratory on inanimate models under the supervision of the instructor. It has been assumed that there is a strong relationship between learning and anxiety; while a moderate level of anxiety is necessary for learning, a high level of anxiety causes a decrease in learning. Many studies have reported that students experience anxiety before their first clinical/practice experience. During skills training, it is observed that students are stressed, their hands are shaking, and they do not feel comfortable, especially before practices involving invasive interventions. This is a factor that makes learning skills training difficult. Therefore, it is important for the student to be comfortable, self-confident, and mentally open to learning during skill training. New applications and different techniques for skill training are important in this sense. It is reported that aromatherapy application has positive effects on reducing anxiety and increasing concentration. RESEARCH HYPOTHESES: H0: Aromatherapy has no effect on students' anxiety and learning levels during skill training. H1: Aromatherapy reduces the anxiety experienced by students during skills training. H2: Aromatherapy has a positive effect on students' learning nursing skills.

The population of the research consists of 81 students enrolled in the first year of nursing. Power analysis was performed to determine the number of people to be included in the study. The power of the test was calculated with the G\*Power 3.1 program. As a similar study in the relevant literature, the effect size regarding stress change was calculated as 0.760. In order to exceed the 95% value in determining the power of the study; At a significance level of 5% and an effect size of 0.760, 42 people, 21 people in the groups, need to be reached (df=20; t=1.725). To avoid bias in the people to be included in the study, they were recruited by randomization according to the order of arrival. The randomization table was created using "https://www.calculatorsoup.com". In the research, it was reached a total of 77 students (experiment=39, control=38). Introductory Information Form, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and IV Catheter Application Check List will be used to collect data. In this study, it is planned to analyze the data in SPSS program. Normality tests, mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, number-percentage distributions in data analysis; Independent Groups t-test, Mann Whitney U test, One-Way Analysis of Variance, Kruskal-Wallis test will be used. Differences between groups in terms of categorical variables will be examined with the chi-square test. Pearson correlation analysis will be used to examine the relationships between variables, and Cohen-d effect size will be used to determine the effect size.