MOTOR PRACTICES EXPERIMENTATION AS WORK RELATED STRESS MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS: Evaluation of the educational impact of the Knowing Yourself Through Movement® courses at AUO Città della Salute e della Scienza of Turin

Abstract

Introduction: Professionals experience a feeling of inadequacy and guilt and to reduce stress they avoid emotional involvement or avoid requests for help. The Feldenkrais Method®, a relaxation and awareness technique, can help them promote coping and resilience strategies..

Methods: The study, conducted from 2020 to 2023 with the aim of measuring stress and describing the impact of training on improving its management, analyzed the impact at the end of the course and at 6 months.

Results: There were 164 participants in 13 editions. The pre-post comparison revealed a positive impact on the perception of stress, with a significant reduction. The feeling of control over events, the emotion of anger and the sense of being overwhelmed appear to have been reduced. A greater awareness of one's somatic response mechanisms to stress emerges and the acquisition of new strategies.

Discussion: Sharing reflections on the needs and critical issues of working situations has highlighted how an increase in self-awareness and a more attentive listening to one's own bodily signals can enhance the ability to modulate one's internal states. The need for stress prevention and management interventions has been recurrent. The anonymity of the questionnaires did not allow us to investigate correlations with the personal data.

Take home message:

1. a stressed operator is less empathetic and compassionate and is less available to dialogue with colleagues

2. taking care of professionals is a corporate duty

3. awareness paths in micro-teams, could represent a way to conduct courses to explore.

Keywords: burn out, stress, awareness, listening to oneself, well-being