|
The Therapeutic Touch Network of Ontario: Research Guidelines Research is essential to the growth of knowledge. In order to advance knowledge of Therapeutic Touch™, The Therapeutic Touch Network of Ontario (TTNO) wishes to offer financial assistance to its members who are interested in conducting either qualitative or quantitative research on the outcomes of Therapeutic Touch on humans with various conditions and illness. Knowledge of Prior Research: As you consider engaging in Therapeutic Touch research, it is useful to be aware of the established Therapeutic Touch research. An excellent resource is the Annotated Bibliography Published Therapeutic Touch™ Research 1975 to July, 2004, compiled by Theresa Moore, RN, MScN. It is available from The Therapeutic Touch Network of Ontario, P.O. Box 156, Station U, Etobicoke, ON M8Z 5P1, or by phone: 416-231-6824 or email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Letter of Intent: To be eligible for funding, your Letter of Intent must be received by January 31 of the year in which you wish to receive funding. Include in your Letter of Intent responses to the following questions: 1. What is your research question? 2. What prompted you to ask that question? 3. What is your research plan? 4. Who will be involved? 5. What methodology will you be using? Include in your response the reason or reasons you decided to use this particular methodology. 6. How will you analyze your data? 7. If you are replicating a study, which study or studies are you replicating? If replicating how are you incorporating suggestions offered by P. Winstead-Fry PhD, and J. Kijek (see below for Suggestions for Conducting Research). 8. In what refereed journals are you thinking of submitting your research for publication? 9. What funding are you requesting? Please indicate how you would allocate these funds. 10. What research experience have you and/or your team had? If you have questions about preparing your Letter of Intent, you may contact the TTNO Research Board Member either by mail at The Therapeutic Touch Network of Ontario, 156 Station U, Etobicoke, ON M8Z 5P1, or email at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. Suggestions for Conducting Research: The TTNO is interested in funding research that meets general research standards. The TTNO also is interesting in funding Therapeutic Touch™ research which incorporates suggestions found in Winstead-Fry, P. and Kijek, Jean. "An Integrative Review and Meta-Analysis of Therapeutic Touch Research". Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 5.6(1999), 58-67. The authors suggest: 1. The people who are designing and implementing the research neither offer the Therapeutic Touch treatments nor make observations of participants. This suggestion is important because those most involved in the research design might inadvertently influence the results. 2. Use Therapeutic Touch as developed and taught by Dolores Krieger and Dora Kunz. Offer a real Therapeutic Touch session. In some previous studies the Therapeutic Touch treatment was sometimes limited to five minutes or less. Therapeutic Touch treatments usually last about 15 to 20 minutes. A rest period of approximately 15 minutes is part of the session. In the next section, "Other Considerations When Conducting Therapeutic Touch Research", the use of "real" Therapeutic Touch as developed and taught by Dolores Krieger and Dora Kunz is discussed more fully. 3. Conduct research on the outcomes of Therapeutic Touch on humans with various illnesses and conditions rather than on those who are healthy. Other Considerations When Conducting Therapeutic Touch™ Research: Controlling Variables: In research anything that can vary is called a variable. For example, gender is a variable as well as age, height, weight, education, income. In research it is useful to "control" as many variables as possible. Below are some examples of variables in Therapeutic Touch research: 1. Practitioners: Recruit practitioners who are similar. To control for gender, recruit only men or only women practitioners. Other variables include the number of years the practitioners have been offering Therapeutic Touch. Decide on the number of years offering Therapeutic Touch you think appropriate for your study and then find practitioners who meet that requirement. Decide whether those offering Therapeutic Touch would all be Registered Nurses (active or retired) or all lay practitioners. 2. The Therapeutic Touch session: Decide how the session will be offered, e.g. Will it be offered without touch? Or, will the participants be asked if they agree to have their shoulders, hands, feet touched? To end the session, will the practitioner and the participant sit back to back? Where will the participant rest after the treatment? Will someone stay with the research participant? If so, who? When these guidelines are established, each practitioner will be able to offer a session that adheres as closely as possible to the study’s guidelines. This does not contradict the idea of offering "real" Therapeutic Touch. It, however, does give guidelines to the practitioners. Being specific about the treatment also enables those reading the results of the study to know how sessions were offered and how they might be reproduced in the event another researcher wishes to replicate the study. 3. The Control Group: In research there is often a "control" group. Those in the control group are as similar as possible to those in the ‘treatment" group. For example, in the studies conducted on the efficacy of a new drug, there is the treatment group who are given the drug and the "control" group who are given a placebo. In research on Therapeutic Touch, the placebo has often been a "sham" treatment. In those studies using "sham" or placebo Therapeutic Touch, the people offering "sham" Therapeutic Touch were instructed not to give Therapeutic Touch (they were often not Therapeutic Touch practitioners) but to move their hands over the individual. Sometimes those offering the placebo of "sham" Therapeutic Touch were asked to count backwards to make it difficult to think about the person over whom they were moving their hands. 4. Sham Therapeutic Touch: There are problems with using "sham" or placebo Therapeutic Touch in research. To minimize any problems, it is essential that those offering the sham/placebo have no knowledge of Therapeutic Touch including knowledge gained by having received Therapeutic Touch. Indeed, it is important that those offering ‘sham" or placebo Therapeutic Touch have no knowledge of any modality where intent is important. In a recent study on Bone Marrow Transplant (see Winter 2006 in touch) the researchers circumvented the pitfalls of "sham" or placebo Therapeutic Touch by using, as the control condition, a "friendly visit." In the study, Therapeutic Touch was more efficacious than "friendly visit." In an editorial, Drs. Stuart Bondurant and Harold Sox urged those conducting research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) to use standard research guidelines as suggested by the US Preventive Service Task Force. Ideas from their editorial are found on the Research Page of in touch, 2005 Autumn. The original article is Harris, Russell, et al. "Current Methods of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force: A Review of the Process". American Journal of Preventative Medicine. 20 (2001), 3S. The Therapeutic Touch Network of Ontario thanks Patricia Winstead-Fry, PhD, for her assistance in developing these research guidelines. Download a PDF version of the TTNO Research Guidelines and the TTNO Research Policy and Procedures To Top
|
