| The primary goal of this randomized, controlled study was to determine the effects of expressive writing on physical and psychological stress, occupational burnout, absenteeism, and coping behaviors in a population of nurses, considered to be most at risk for negative physical, psychological, and behavioral outcomes. The study applied the written emotional expression intervention developed by Pennebaker (1986) to a group of nurses as compared to a control group condition of similar nurses. Outcome measures of depression, physical illness and physician visits, work absenteeism, mood, job satisfactions, and secondary traumatic stress were examined. There were no significant interaction findings in any of the above constructs, however examination of group means indicate trends of improvement over time in the experimental condition on depression, physical health symptoms, and intrusive symptoms of secondary traumatic stress.;Exploratory measures of vigorous mood, occupational burnout, occupational fatigue, and perceived control over stress were also examined. Again, there were no significant interaction findings, however there were improvements trending toward the hypothesized direction for vigorous mood, personal accomplishment subscale of occupational burnout, and perceived control over stress.;Overall, applying the expressive writing paradigm to nurses who work with higher risk patients could potentially provide them with a safe context to disclose their thoughts and emotions related to past and ongoing stressful or traumatic events. Research applying interventions for stress with nurses is limited, therefore this study provides pilot data in support of expressive writing as safe and potentially effective coping mechanism for nurses and should be examined further in future research. |
