Nursing Interventions to Overcome PTSD

Studying PTSD and the way it affects nurses and healthcare workers has gained some momentum. It became clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, with widespread cases of PTSD in nursing, that we, as a nursing community, were not prepared to deal with the impact of the stress, burn out, PTSD, etc.  Some nurses chose to leave the profession all together, and many nurses did not feel there was enough support or accessible tools, so they were left on their own to “figure it out”. There is still a great need for more studies focused in this area, and for further exploration of interventions, but some more recent strategies being explored include the use of technology, in the form of a smartphone app for nurses coping with PTSD (Reyes, et al., 2024).

This creative intervention makes sense in a world where people use their smart phones for organization, education, family management, entertainment, communication creativity, health management and more.  Reyes et al. (2024) conducted a study to test the effectiveness of a cell phone app that promoted mindfulness and acceptance, based on the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for nurses who were traumatized during the COVID-19 pandemic. ACT is considered a, third-wave cognitive behavior therapy which focuses on emotions, mindfulness, acceptance, relationships, values goals and meta-cognition which was the basis for the app, and has been shown to be effective in improving PTSD symptoms in previous populations evaluated (Reyes et al., 2024).  

The mindfulness and acceptance-based smartphone app was tested over a 10-week period where there were 60 participants (Reyes et al., 2024). 30 of the participants in the intervention group completed specific interactions with the intervening smartphone app with daily exercises and weekly informational videos and reflection journals over a six-week period (Reyes et al., 2024). The other 30 participants in the wait-listed control group (as they were offered use of the app following the study) did not utilize the designated app (Reyes et al., 2024). Over the 10- week period all participants completed a pretest, a three-week and six-week assessment, and then completed follow-up work at week 10 (Reyes et al., 2024).

The outcomes of the study showed that the nurses using the app showed greater improvement, as compared to the control groups of PTSD symptoms severity, experiential avoidance, and rumination, but no statistically significant improvement for resilience or mindfulness related to the app (Reyes et al., 2024). Another aspect of the study showed a high satisfaction and usability rate of the app which is encouraging for future studies considering ACT-based apps, as well as for the development and utilization of similar apps and technology providing effective interventions for nurses suffering from PTSD (Reyes et al., 2024).