Progressive Muscle Relaxation Exercises and Anxiety

Nursing practice education consists of two parts: laboratory applications aiming at skill acquisition of students and the application part experienced on real patients. Student nurses gain their first skills in laboratory applications accompanied by an instructor. This experience may increase the anxiety levels of nursing students due to reasons such as practising for the first time, hesitating to practice under the supervision of an instructor, and fear of making mistakes. If students learn intramuscular injection, which is one of the skill applications that is a part of care, which is the most important power of nursing, with increased anxiety levels, it may cause a decrease in clinical competence and a decrease in the quality of health care they will provide in the future. Various methods have been tried for nursing students' anxiety levels to be above the optimum level in laboratory applications and it has been observed that anxiety levels have decreased. One of these methods is progressive muscle relaxation exercises. In this study, it is planned to apply progressive muscle relaxation exercises in order to examine the effect of progressive muscle relaxation exercises on the success and anxiety of nursing students related to intramuscular injection practice.

Materials and Method: In this pre-test-post-test randomised controlled study planned to be conducted in Necmettin Erbakan University Faculty of Nursing skill laboratories, consent will be obtained from the 1st year nursing students. The students will fill in the descriptive characteristics form, Visual Anxiety Scale and IM injection success test prepared by reviewing the literature before and after intramuscular injection. After the completion of the forms, 'progressive muscle relaxation exercises' will be applied to the students by the researcher for about 30 minutes. Students who volunteered to participate in the study and who took the 'Fundamentals of Nursing' course for the first time will be included in the study.

In this pre-test-post-test randomised controlled study planned to be conducted in Necmettin Erbakan University Faculty of Nursing skill laboratories, consent will be obtained from the 1st year nursing students. The students will fill in the descriptive characteristics form, Visual Anxiety Scale and IM injection success test prepared by reviewing the literature before and after intramuscular injection. After the completion of the forms, 'progressive muscle relaxation exercises' will be applied to the students by the researcher for about 30 minutes. Students who volunteered to participate in the study and who took the 'Fundamentals of Nursing' course for the first time will be included in the study.

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

* Students who volunteered to participate in the study
* took the 'Fundamentals of Nursing' lesson for the first time

Exclusion Criteria:

* Students who are foreign nationals,
* who have taken the course more than once due to absenteeism or failure,
* who have come with horizontal or vertical transfer,
* who are graduates of Health Vocational High School,
* who have previous injection experience
* who have been diagnosed with anxiety,
* students who do not want to participate in the study