Effectiveness of Aromatherapy on Pain and Anxiety among Burns Patients at Public Hospital of Karachi

Aromatherapy is a safe supplement to reduce the pain and anxiety among burn patients. Objective: To determine the effectiveness of aromatherapy on pain and anxiety among burn patients at a public tertiary care teaching Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan. Methods: A quasi-experimental design was employed, on participants of both genders aged between 18-54 years and had burns that were less than 40% Total Body Surface Area. The sample size for this study was calculated through Open Epi version 3.0 with a proportion formula and the calculated sample size was 88. Two open accessed questionnaires Pain and Anxiety Symptom Scale (PASS-20) and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) was used to collect the data. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to test the effect of the intervention (8.00 to 5.75). Results: The results showed that aromatherapy significantly reduced post-intervention pain (p-value0.001). The sub-scale “cognitive”, “escape avoidance”, and the global PASS score was significant after intervention with P-values <0.0001, 0.039, and 0.025 respectively. The mean scores of PASS in all sub-scales and the global score was significantly decreased after the intervention with a large effect size (r>0.5) using Cohen's (1988) criteria. Conclusions: The findings suggested that aromatherapy was a safe supplement to reduce the pain and anxiety among burn patients. Nurses can use at the clinical practice to enhance the use of aromatherapy by which the pain and anxiety can reduce among burn patients.