Emotional Freedom Techniques on Burnout in Therapists

Healthcare employees experience various difficulties, and burnout is one of the most pressing issues in the field (Bridgeman et al., 2018; Knox et al., 2018). Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), commonly called "tapping," is an emerging psychophysiological intervention that combines elements from cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, and acupressure (Church, 2019; Church et al., 2022). The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of EFT on burnout in rehabilitation therapists. Participants will be members of the American Society of Hand Therapists (ASHT) who are actively employed as occupational therapy or physical therapy practitioners. To recruit participants, researchers will complete the ASHT research division's application for participant recruitment. If the application is denied, researchers will recruit participants through social media. Participants will attend a free, one-hour live virtual wellness session held on a virtual meeting platform. If they choose to participate in the study, they will be directed to a Qualtrics survey to complete the informed consent, demographics, and the Burnout Assessment Tool. During the session, the researchers will guide participants through EFT, collecting Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS) and expanded SUDS data immediately prior to and following the intervention. Additionally, researchers will collect follow-up data using the BAT-S, SUDS, and expanded SUDS questions one month later. Researchers will perform descriptive statistics to analyze demographic data and use SPSS with appropriate statistical tests to explore relationships between the BAT-S, SUDS, and expanded SUDS data from the pre, post, and follow-up data.

Inclusion criteria

(a) the ability to read and speak English, (b) 18 years of age or older, and (c) actively working in direct patient care.

Exclusion criteria

• Exclusion criteria consisted of individuals who were not practicing therapists, such as managers, therapy aides, or technicians. Following initial recruitment efforts, the researchers were invited to conduct the virtual EFT session for therapy employees of a private practice. Due to this, the researchers expanded the inclusion criteria to include speech therapists employed at this facility. All other inclusion and exclusion criteria remained the same.