Multisensory Environmental Therapy (Snoezelen) for Job Stress Reduction in Mental Health Nurses: A Randomized Trial

Occupational stress is a widely recognized in vocational rehabilitation. In particular, it is a problem for nurses in the health care industry [1,2]. Factors such as work overload, paperwork and patient documentation, exposure to violence, changing staff levels, job role diffusion, administrative duties, career development issues, coping with patient illness and death, and bringing work problems home contribute to high levels of on-the-job stress and a challenge to holistic nursing [1,3]. Chronic job stress can lead to negative psychological states described as burnout. Burnout has been described as a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personalized accomplishment [4]. Burnout is correlated with negative health effects; physical illness, exhaustion, increased alcohol or drug use, marital and/ or family problems, anxiety and depression [5]. Burnout, in turn, negatively affects the delivery of services to patients; reduced quality of nursing care, greater frequency of both absenteeism and job turnover. Burnout rates in younger nurses are high which lead many to drop out of the field [6]. Methods of alleviating nursing occupational stress to reduce burnout have targeted the identification and modification of occupational stressors, developing coping strategies to manage stress, and interventions developed to reduce stress [7-9].