The Effect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on the Quality of Life and Sexual Performance in Female Nurses

Introduction: Attention to quality of life and sexual function of nurses is considered as factors affecting marital life and their overall performance. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of ACT on the quality of life and sexual performance in female nurses. Methods: It was a experimental study with pretest, posttest and control group design. The study population included 160 female nurses in Marand Hospital in the winter of 2019. 30 female nurses were selected though voluntary sampling method and they were randomly assigned into experimental and control groups (each group of 15 nurses). The experimental group received eight ninety-minute sessions of ACT during a month. The applied questionnaires included the quality-of-life questionnaire (Warosherbon, 1992) and married women’s sexual performance (Keraskian Mujembenari, Keybollahi, 2014). The data from the study were analyzed through ANCOVA method.  Results: The results showed that ACT has had significant effect on the quality of life and sexual performance of female nurses (p<0.001) and led to the increase of their quality of life (49.60±8.29 to 57.66± 8.20) and sexual performance (51.40± 8.28 to 60.06± 7.93).  Conclusions: ACT can be applied as an efficient method to improve female nurses’ quality of life and sexual performance through employing techniques such as mental techniques, self as observer, cognitive fusion techniques, explaining the values and committed activities.