Resilience Skills Training Versus Metacognitive Therapy: A Comparison of Effectiveness on Anxiety in Nurses Working in Intensive Care Units and Emergency Department

Abstract

Background: Anxiety is an outcome of stressful work environments like clinical environments, which harms the mental health and delays provision of services to patients, consequently. Objectives: This study examined the effects of resilience skills training and metacognitive therapy on nurses’ anxiety who work in intensive care units and an emergency department. Methods: This randomized controlled field trial was carried out on 54 nurses working in ICU, PICU, and NICU units and the emergency department of Valiasr Hospital, Birjand, Iran. The participants were allocated via permuted block randomization into three groups of resilience, metacognitive therapy, and control. Research instruments include a demographics form and the Spielberger anxiety inventory. Parametric statistics (e.g., ANOVA, repeated measures ANOVA, Chi square and Fisher’s exact test) were employed for data analysis in SPSS (V.19) (P < 0.05). Results: In the resilience group, the mean scores of trait and state anxiety significantly decreased immediately and one month after the intervention compared to the period before the intervention (P < 0.001). However, there was no significant difference in the metacognitive therapy group in terms of the mean score of trait and state anxiety in the three stages of study (P > 0.05). There were significant differences between the three groups in terms of trait and state anxiety mean score changes before and immediately after the intervention, and before and one month after the intervention (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Resilience skills training were more efficient than metacognitive therapy in attenuating anxiety in emergency and intensive care nurses. Nursing managers are recommended to hold resilience skills training sessions to alleviate nurses’ anxiety.