A massage therapy characterized by long, slow, gliding strokes is a technique that has been used over the centruries in numerous cultures and adopted in nursing as a traditional, alternative and nonphamacological means of promoting rest and relaxation. But the study of massage therapy is not a few and is seldom used by nurses for middle-aged women.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the hand & arm massage as an independent nursing intervention for the middle-aged women. The data were collected with nonequivalent control group non-synchronized design from 14 subjects, 7 for experimental group and 7 for control group in D city and C city from January 1997 to January 1998.
Subjects agreed to participate in this study and ranged in age from 37 to 53 years with mean age of 43 Hand & Arm massage therapy developed by Cayce & Reilly was applied to the experimental group during 1530 minutes once a day. Massage therpy was given twice every week during 4 weeks. Measurement of the subject´s pulse, blood pressure (systolic, digs, olic, pulse pressure) and blood sugar were done before and after the applying of hand & arm massage therapy. The data were analyzed with mean, S.D, %, wilcoxon test.
The results were summarized as follows ;
1. Before the treatment, two group were not significantly different group.
2. A fter the treatment, two group were significantly different at systolic blood pressure.
The findings suggested that the use of the hand & arm massage therapy for the middle-aged women produced significant changes the level of systolic blood pressure. Therefore it is recommended to use the hand and arm massage therapy as an independent nursing intervention for the middle-aged women.
For the futher research, it needs to replicate this concept´s research for the more and the different subjects. And it needs to investigate the effectiveness of massage therapy for decreasoing fatigue, with aromatherapy.
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