Award Date

1-1-1998

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Department

Nursing

First Committee Member

Mary Koithan

Number of Pages

128

Abstract

Chronic pain is one of the most pervasive and expensive health care problems in society today. Fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis are chronic disease states which currently have no cure. A common complaint among these patients is constant and unremitting pain, which often worsens with inactivity. At this time treatment for both disease processes is essentially palliative, supportive and aimed at symptom relief; A quasi experimental design was used to determine if there were any significant differences in pain perception between persons with FM or RA receiving therapeutic touch (TT) and a placebo treatment (PT). Sixty-one subjects served as their own control group. Using a vertical visual analogue scale, pain was measured pre- and post-treatment. It was noted that the data were skewed and had a bimodal distribution. Therefore, the nonparametric tests of Wilcoxon Ranks Test and the Chi Square 2 x 2 Test of Independence were done. The hypothesis, that patients diagnosed with FM and RA would demonstrate significant decreases in pain (p {dollar}<{dollar}.05) following TT when compared to PT, was not supported (p =.082).

Keywords

Chronic; Clients; Diagnosed; Pain; Therapeutic; Touch; Utilization

Controlled Subject

Nursing

File Format

pdf

File Size

3706.88 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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