The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment based Therapy on Reducing Coronavirus Anxiety and Occupational Stress in Nurses

During the covid-19 pandemic, nurses are faced with difficulties and a high workload which can lead to mental health problems such as occupational stress and anxiety. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on reducing anxiety and occupational stress in nurses.

The present research was conducted as a semi-experimental pre-test and post-test study with the control group. Participants were sixty nurses who work in Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom City in April 2022. The participants were selected by the available sampling method and were randomly placed in two equal interventional and control groups. Data were collected online using the coronavirus anxiety scale and the Parker and DeCotis occupational stress questionnaire. The intervention group received the intervention based on acceptance and commitment in eight sixty-minute sessions. No intervention was performed in the control group. Then both groups completed the post-test questionnaire. Data were analyzed using t-test multivariate and univariate analysis of covariance tests and SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 22.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Ill.

The mean (SD) of occupational stress in the interventional group decreased from 40.4 (7.9) before intervention to 37.4 (10.2) after the intervention (P=0.037). The anxiety of the Coronavirus decreased from 13.1(1.6) to 7.3 (5.1) (P<0.001). There was no difference in the scores of the control group in the pre-test and post-test. Treatment based on acceptance and commitment had an effect on reducing of coronavirus anxiety by 0.113 (P=0.046), and on reducing occupational stress by 0.132 (P=0.036).

The study showed that the intervention based on acceptance and commitment led to reducing the level of anxiety of Coronavirus and occupational stress in nurses.