The Effect of Therapeutic Touch on Exam Anxiety

Test anxiety is a condition that has cognitive, emotional and physiological aspects and causes unwanted and disturbing emotions during the exam. It can inhibit the mental perception needed to do well on an exam, as well as the clear thinking skills and memory needed to study effectively.The person may feel anxious, worthless or disorganized, experience rapid heartbeat, headaches and stress; They may compare themselves with their peers due to test anxiety. Test anxiety can hinder educational success and negatively impact students' skill development and academic performance. Nursing education is a highly stressful process that includes theoretical and practical learning and teaching experiences. This situation further increases students' anxiety levels. Studies have found that nursing students' test anxiety is higher than other university students.I t is known that many complementary methods are used to reduce anxiety. Therapeutic touch, which is one of the energy-based practices, is one of them. When the literature is examined, it can be seen that therapeutic touch has been studied on symptoms such as anxiety, fatigue, sleep quality, comfort and pain in different sample groups, but there is no study on test anxiety.Therefore, this study was planned to determine the effect of therapeutic touch applied to nursing students on test anxiety.