DEVELOPMENT OF A PILOT EDUCATIONAL SEMINAR FOR THE INTEGRATIVE MEDICAL MANAGEMENT OF ADULTS WITH ANXIETY

Anxiety is a global disease that continues to rise. The COVID 19 global pandemic, natural disasters due to climate change, war, and personal stressors continue to cause the steady rise in anxiety worldwide. As many as 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety. A review of standard anxiety treatments including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac, benzodiazepines such as Xanax, and cognitive behavioral therapy revealed they only provided relief for approximately half of the patients treated. Over the past two years, provider colleagues and their clients in an outpatient private practice where this educational seminar took place had been increasingly expressing an interest in integrative methods for the management of adult anxiety. This Doctor of Nursing Practice quality improvement pilot project aimed to address this issue through creation of an online educational seminar presented to the nurse practitioners at a small outpatient behavioral health clinic. Although inferential statistics were unable to be conducted for this project, the results demonstrated that the participants in this small pilot study showed a small increase in mean that we could infer as a trend toward increasing knowledge and understanding. However, no significant changes were noted in provider attitudes toward integrative healthcare. A limitation of this project included a small sample size from one location