The effect of therapeutic touch in patients with cancer pain

Therapeutic touch has been shown to help reduce pain in several ailments. Cancer patients experience considerable pain during their illness. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of therapeutic touch on pain experienced by cancer patients. The study uses a quasi-experimental design. A sample of sixteen hospitalized cancer patients was selected. The patients were randomly assigned to two groups: the experimental and the placebo control group. The patients assigned to the experimental group received a therapeutic touch treatment on two consecutive days, each day the treatment lasted for a period of 20 to 30 minutes. The patients in the placebo control group received mimicked therapeutic touch for 20 - 30 minutes.. A Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) was used to measure pain before and after the therapeutic touch treatment. At the end of the second day of the study, a Patient Touch Questionnaire (PTQ) was administered to measure the subjects\u27 responses to the therapeutic touch treatment. The hypothesis that Therapeutic vi Touch would significantly decrease pain in cancer patients is supported by the observations made in this study