Yoga for Stress Management in Health Care Personnel

Karolinska Institute

Status: Completed

Conditions: Stress, Physiological; Stress, Psychological; Yoga

Treatments: Other: Rest without using any relaxation technique; Behavioral: Yoga as stress management

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01168648

Ekhagastiftelsen 2001-5

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to investigate if yoga can be an effective stress management technique for health care personnel.

Full description

Stress, both job related and personal, is an increasing problem in the health care sector. Yoga is said to have a good stress-reducing effect.

The participants will provide blood, urine, and saliva samples. They will take part in two different stress tests. They will also fill in various qualitative questionnaires, including the Swedish questionnaire on health related quality of life (SWEDQUAL), Antonovsky's sense of coherence scale (KASAM), and the Job stress survey (JSS), both before the study starts and after 3 months of participation.

Enrollment: 71 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 65 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• BMI 18-30
• healthy
• work in the health care sector

Exclusion criteria

• medication, including contraceptives and all medications or topical skin preparations with cortisone in any form (exception: hormone replacement therapy for hypothyroidism were included if their hormone levels were within the normal range)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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71 participants in 3 patient groups

Yoga as stress management

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention consists of following a program of yoga at least three times a week for three months. The yoga program has been designed to reduce stress.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Yoga as stress management

Control group

Active Comparator group

Description:

The group rests without using any specific program for relaxation at least three times a week for three months.

Treatment:

Other: Rest without using any relaxation technique

Yoga as stress management fewer tests

Other group

Description:

Eight persons participated in the same intervention as the experimental arm but did not undergo the full range of tests because they did not meet all the inclusion criteria for the study, most commonly because of medication use or body mass index.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Yoga as stress management