The Effect of Progressive Relaxation Exercises on Anxiety, Satisfaction and Stress Levels Before Simulation Education

Location of the research: The research was planned to be conducted at Hacettepe University Faculty of Nursing. There is a simulation laboratory in the department to enable students to perform their professional skills in a high-reality environment. In the laboratory, there are all kinds of equipment that a clinic should have, such as a medium reality simulation manikin, nurse's desk, patient bed, monitor, bedside oxygen systems, treatment, and emergency car. Lab; It consists of 3 parts application room, control room, and analysis room.Time of the research: The research will start after the approval of the ethics committee and institutional permissions. The implementation phase of the research is planned to be completed within 3 months. The universe of the research, the sample, the research group: The universe of the research; will consist of students studying in the 2nd year of the Faculty of Nursing. The main purpose of choosing this student group is that it is a group of students who have successfully completed the applied basic courses such as Internal Medicine Nursing and Surgical Nursing in the 2nd year, have basic knowledge and skills on illness and nursing care, but still do not have sufficient equipment in terms of intervening with the patient. In this student group, it was thought that when they were at the beginning of education and practices, progressive relaxation exercises application in reducing the anxiety they experienced during simulation training and increasing their learning satisfaction, raising awareness in this field and the use of this method in the further education processes would make significant contributions to student education. In this study, with the aim of determining the minimum sample size, the sample size was determined by considering the optimum sample numbers as a result of examining the sample sizes in which data saturation was reached in similar studies in the literature. According to this, after the power analysis, it was determined that a total of 27 people in each group should be required for multiple variance analysis in repeated measurements in a 2x2 factorial pattern between groups, with 80% power and a 5% margin of error. In the research, students who applied progressive relaxation exercises and simulation applications together will form the intervention group, and students who only participated in the simulation application will form the control group.

Type of the study: The research was planned in a randomized controlled design with the aim of determining the effect of progressive relaxation exercises applied before the simulation training on the state anxiety, student satisfaction, and perceived stress level of nursing students.

Application of Research An acquaintance and information meeting will be held before the progressive relaxation exercises sessions for students who meet the research criteria and agree to participate in the study. At the meeting, students will also be informed about the research and progressive relaxation exercises and their written informed consent will be obtained.

The data will be collected through the face-to-face interview technique, the application of progressive relaxation exercises, the data collection form, and scales developed by the researchers. The evaluations of the students in terms of physical parameters (vital signs) will be measured by the same researcher as pulse, respiratory rate, and blood pressure, respectively. Measurements will be taken repeatedly, before and after the simulation application, and the obtained values will be recorded. Students will be assigned to groups by simple random randomization method. In order to prevent the dependency relationship between students and researchers and to provide blinding between researchers, information about participation in the research will be made by the researcher who will carry out the progressive relaxation exercises application, and it will be especially emphasized that the student's acceptance or refusal to participate in the research will not affect their success grades. In this way, researchers other than the researcher who will apply the progressive relaxation exercises will continue the simulation training routinely without knowing which group the students are in. The days and time intervals of progressive relaxation exercise sessions will be determined with the students who will be in the intervention group in the research.

Pre-Test Before the simulation application and progressive relaxation exercises sessions, the State Anxiety Scale and the Perceived Stress Scale for Nursing Students will be administered to the students in both groups and their vital signs will be measured.

Intervention for the Intervention Group After the pre-test, progressive relaxation exercises will be applied to the students in the progressive relaxation exercises+simulation application group in an appropriate area in the Faculty of Nursing, and then the students will be taken to the simulation laboratory to perform the simulation application. An evaluation/analysis session will then be held.

Things to Do for the Control Group After the pre-test, the students in the control group will be given a simulation application in the simulation laboratory of the Faculty of Nursing by the researcher in the research team. An evaluation/analysis session will then be held.

Within the scope of the simulation application; The ideal number of students to take part in each simulation was determined to be 5. 2 days before the simulation day, all students will be given the necessary materials to prepare for the simulation application. On the day of the simulation, the researchers responsible for the simulation application will introduce the environment and the tools and equipment they will use in the simulation application in order for the students to make preliminary preparations. It will take a total of 60 minutes, including preliminary information (10 minutes), simulation time (15 minutes), and evaluation/analysis session (35 minutes).

Final Test After the progressive relaxation exercises and simulation application are completed by the researchers, the State Anxiety Scale, Student Satisfaction and Self-Confidence Scale in Learning, and Perceived Stress Scale for Nursing Students will be re-applied to the students and vital signs will be re-measured and recorded.

Analysis of the data:

The data to be obtained from the research will be evaluated by transferring them to the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences Statistics 25 program. While evaluating the study data, descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, median, minimum, maximum) for continuous variables and frequency distribution for categorical variables will be given. The Mann-Whitney U Test will be used for the difference between two independent groups, and the Pearson correlation test will be used for the relationship between the scale scores. The significance level will be taken as p<0.05.

In addition to these evaluations; Per Protocol Analysis (PP) and Intention to Treat (ITT) analysis will also be performed. Per protocol, analysis is a method in which only the intervention groups are included in the analysis in intervention studies. Per protocol, the analysis reflects actual response performance. However, in cases where the losses are not random, there is a significant risk of bias. Therefore, the combined use of PP analysis and ITT is a recommended method to check the reliability of the results. ITT is a basic method used to maintain randomization and avoid bias on dropout. The ITT analysis revealed separation, non-compliance, whether or not to receive the treatment/intervention, etc. after randomization. It is defined as the inclusion of each participant in the analysis in the group to which they are assigned, without considering any justification. Researchers need to use at least one of the many statistical strategies to complete missing data (30). In addition, repeated assessments (State Anxiety Scale, Student Satisfaction and Self-Confidence in Learning Scale, and Perceived Stress Scale for Nursing Students) made in the research will be made by two researchers, and the fit (fisher's kappa) statistic will be used to evaluate the agreement.