Evaluation of the effectiveness of an interactive intervention for stress management in health professionals

Abstract

Background. The effects of stress depend on the perception of stressors and a person’s skills for coping with stressful situations.

Objective. Evaluate an interactive intervention to develop resources and skills for proper stress management among healthcare professionals.

Method. This intervention was tested using a chart designed to evaluate the knowledge, skills and attitudes components of stress management, consisting of 17 statements about Knowledge, 11 about Stress management; 20 about Attitudes for reacting to stress. A total of 165 professionals and interns from related careers participated. Statistical analyses were conducted to compare the scores of the three components before and after the intervention using the Student’s t test. McNemar’s test was used to compare the results.

Results. In regard to the effectiveness of the intervention, an analysis of the comparison of scores found statistically significant differences in favor of intervention in the three components: Knowledge (t=-9.77, df=164, p=.000), Skills (t=-10.19, df=164, p=.000) and Attitudes (t=-4.80, df=164, p=.000). The item analysis showed statistically significant increases in the number of correct answers after the intervention in the three components.

Discussion and conclusion. The results of this interactive intervention were statistically significant in Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes for stress management. In addition to being a brief, innovative intervention, based on knowledge translation (4 weeks) and available on the Internet, the evidence of its effectiveness suggests it is a valid tool for proper stress management.