Emotion Regulation Skill Program: Impact on Emotion Regulation, Experiential Avoidance & Compassion Fatigue

January 9, 2025 updated by: Aycan Kayalar, Hacettepe University

The Effect of Skill Development Program for Emotion Regulation on Emotion Regulation, Experiential Avoidance and Compassion Fatigue of Oncology Nurses

In this study, the effects of the skills development program for regulating emotions applied to oncology nurses on oncology nurses' emotion regulation, experiential avoidance, and comorbidity fatigue will be examined. The research will be conducted as a randomized controlled experimental study with pretest-posttest and follow-up design.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Cancer has profound emotional, psychological, and behavioral impacts on patients and caregivers. Oncology nurses, while providing care, often experience feelings of helplessness, sadness, anxiety, and anger. Shift work-induced insomnia and irregular living patterns can impair emotional regulation, negatively affecting nurses' ability to provide holistic care, make effective decisions, and maintain professional interactions. Emotional recognition and management skills are critical for nurses engaged in long-term care processes. Emotional regulation involves identifying, understanding, and managing emotional responses, encompassing awareness, appropriate management, and expression. Ineffective emotional regulation may lead to difficulties in coping with emotional challenges and increase the risk of developing disorders such as depression and anxiety.

The literature highlights that emotional regulation strategies, which involve specific skills to modify emotional experiences, play a significant role in the development of various psychopathological disorders and affect mental health. Maladaptive strategies such as experiential avoidance-defined as avoiding situations or thoughts to escape distressing emotions-have been linked to increased risks of anxiety, depression, and burnout. Effective emotional regulation strategies are crucial for maintaining mental health and influencing behaviors. Increased experiential avoidance among healthcare workers has been associated with higher levels of burnout.

Empathy is a cornerstone of psychosocial care for patients and their families in oncology clinics. However, failure to regulate emotions during empathetic interactions can result in compassion fatigue, characterized by physical and emotional exhaustion, anger, disengagement, reduced job performance, and patient dissatisfaction. Effective emotional regulation supports the delivery of empathetic care and protects the psychosocial well-being of nurses. Emotional regulation enhances individuals' emotional awareness and enables more conscious and controlled management of emotions. This study aims to investigate the impact of an emotional regulation skills development program on oncology nurses' emotional regulation difficulties, experiential avoidance, and compassion fatigue in challenging work environments.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

66

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

  • Turkey
      • Ankara, Turkey, 06100
        • Hacettepe University
        • Contact:
        • Contact:
          • AYCAN KAYALAR, PhD Student
        • Contact:
          • DUYGU HİÇDURMAZ, PROFESSOR

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Volunteering to participate in the research
  • Working in the specified units for at least six months
  • Not having a disease or disability would make it difficult for them to understand the program and data collection tools and to apply the skills.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Having received or currently receiving individual or group psychotherapy/counseling program within the last six months
  • Requesting to withdraw from the study at any stage of the research
  • Regularly missing two consecutive group sessions
  • Failure to attend three or more sessions in total

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Prevention
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: The Skill Development Program for Emotion Regulation
The Skill Development Program for Emotion Regulation to be carried out with the intervention group consists of 6 sessions. The sessions are planned to be held in 3 groups of 11 people. The duration of a session is planned to be 90 minutes. Sessions will be completed in three weeks, twice a week. Sessions will be face-to-face. The session of the same group will be held on the same day and time every week.
Behavioral: The Skill Development Program for Emotion Regulation
The Skill Development Program for Emotion Regulation to be carried out with the intervention group was planned as 6 sessions. The aim of this study was to investigate The Skill Development Program for Emotion Regulation Program on oncology nurses' emotion regulation difficulties, emotion regulation skills, experiential avoidance, and compassion fatigue.
No Intervention: Control Group
After the follow-up tests were completed for the nurses in the control group, the 6-session skill program applied to the intervention group was planned to be applied in the same way within their wishes.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale-Short Form
Time Frame: [Time Frame: Baseline, 3th week, 3st month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)
Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale-Short Form consists of 16 items and 5 sub-dimensions in 5-point Likert type (1=almost never, 5=almost always). It has five sub-dimensions: Clarity, Goals, Impulse, Strategies, and Non-Acceptance. A minimum score of 16 points and a maximum score of 80 points can be obtained from the scale and high scores obtained from the sub-dimensions and total score of the scale indicate that emotion regulation difficulties are high.
[Time Frame: Baseline, 3th week, 3st month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in the Emotion Regulation Skills Scale
Time Frame: [Time Frame: Baseline, 3th week, 3st month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)
The Emotion Regulation Skills Scale is a five-point Likert-type (1=almost never, 5=almost always) self-report instrument consisting of 27 items and nine subscales. The sub-dimensions are Awareness/attention, Body sensations, Clarity, Understanding, Acceptance, Tolerance, Preparation for confrontation, Self-support, and Modification. The minimum score that can be obtained from the scale is 27 and the maximum score is 135. The scale can be evaluated on the total score and the average of the sub-dimension scores
[Time Frame: Baseline, 3th week, 3st month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Scale-30
Time Frame: [Time Frame: Baseline, 3th week, 3st month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)
This scale is a 7-point Likert-type (1: Strongly Disagree; 7: Strongly Agree) self-report instrument consisting of 30 items. The minimum score is 30 points and the maximum score is 210 points. This scale has 6 subscales. These subscales consist of behavioral avoidance, aversion to distress, procrastination, distraction/suppression, suppression/denial and endurance of distress. The increase in the scores obtained from the scale means an increase in the level of the related dimension. Only item 15 of the scale items is reverse scored. However, it is possible to get a total score; however, for this purpose, it is necessary to reverse score the distress tolerance dimension.
[Time Frame: Baseline, 3th week, 3st month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)
Change in the Compassion Fatigue Short Scale
Time Frame: [Time Frame: Baseline, 3th week, 3st month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)
This scale is a 10-point Likert-type scale ranging from rarely/never (1) to very often (10) and consists of 13 items. The lowest score is 13 and the highest score is 130. As the scores obtained from the scale increase, the level of co-sensory fatigue experienced by individuals also increases. The scale consists of two sub-dimensions: 'secondary trauma' and 'occupational burnout'
[Time Frame: Baseline, 3th week, 3st month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)
Participant Information Form
Time Frame: Time Frame: baseline
The participant information form included questions about the descriptive characteristics of the nurses. In this context, it includes eight questions such as age, gender, education level, marital status, working time as a nurse, working time as an oncology nurse, number of patients cared for daily, working time per week, place of work, psychiatric diagnosis or treatment, individual or group psychotherapy or psychological counseling program in the past
Time Frame: baseline

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Hacettepe University

Investigators

  • Study Director: DUYGU HİÇDURMAZ, Professor, Hacettepe University

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

March 3, 2025

Primary Completion (Estimated)

May 2, 2025

Study Completion (Estimated)

August 2, 2025

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

January 5, 2025

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 5, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

March 25, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

March 25, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 9, 2025

Last Verified

January 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • AYCAN KAYALAR

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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