Poster Presentation

Sunday, November 4, 2007
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM

Sunday, November 4, 2007
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
This presentation is part of : Clinical Posters
The Effect of Foot Reflexology on Fatigue and Sleep: A Meta-Analysis
Jeongsoon Lee, MS, Dept of Nursing, Dongshin University Gwangju Oriental Hospital, Gwangju, South Korea and Younghae Chung, PhD, Dept of Nursing, Dongshin University, Jeonnam Naju-shi, South Korea.
Learning Objective #1: describe the effectiveness of foot reflexology on fatigue and sleep.
Learning Objective #2: choose the foot reflexology for patients with fatigue or sleep problem, with confidence.

 

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to estimate the effect sizes of the foot reflexology on fatigue and sleep using meta analysis.

Methods: There were 59 master's and doctoral theses and peer reviewed articles on foot reflexology published in Korea from January 1990 to December 2006. We identified 25 theses/articles whose outcome variables were fatigue and/or sleep. Of those 13 had results on fatigue and 16 on sleep. We studied the homogeneity of the effect sizes, calculated the weighted average of the effect sizes and fail-safe N (Rosenthal &Rubin, 1979) at alpha=.01.

Results: Effect sizes of reflexology on fatigue ranged from .38 to 5.30, and the sizes were not homogeneous (Q=112.72, p<.01). The weighted average was 1.76 (95% C.I. : 1.14, 2.39). It was considered to be large (Cohen, 1988) with fail-safe N of 1289.9. The average effect sizes were slightly larger for longer duration, larger frequency, longer per session or total session length. Reflexology seemed to have large effect on fatigue regardless of subject type.

Effect sizes of reflexology on sleep ranged from -.53 to 3.16, mostly on the positive side, and they were not homogeneous (Q=140.56, p<.01). The weighted average was .92 (95% C.I. : .42, 1.43). It was considered to be large (Cohen, 1988) with fail-safe N of 687.0. The average effect size was larger for longer duration, larger frequency, longer per session or total session length. The foot reflexology seemed to have a large effect on sleep for the elderly(1.32, 95% C.I. : .56, 2.08) but not to the others(.62, 95% C.I. : -.05, 1.29).

Conclusion: We conclude that the foot reflexology has a large effect on fatigue regardless of duration, frequency, length, or subject type. Also, we conclude that the foot reflexology has large effect on the elderly regarding sleep.