Therapeutic Touch efficacy: A Systematic Review

Background: recently, the disruptions in the energy field have been omitted from the list of nursing diagnoses published by the north american nursing diagnosis association (nanda). therapeutic touch is a scientific nursing intervention. the aim ofthis systematic review was to identify the efficacy of therapeutic touch (tt) andinvestigate the tenability of omitting this diagnosis from the nanda nursing diagnosislist. methods: for the purpose of the study, we employed the english and persian articlesin complementary therapy (therapeutic touch) area published within january, 2006-december, 2016. the articles were obtained by searching such databases as the proquest, pubmed, science direct, sid, magiran, and iran medex. the searches wereperformed using the following keywords and their mesh equivalents: “the rapeutictouch, aura therapy, and energy healing. finally, 13 articles were selected basedon the inclusion criteria. the articles were evaluated based on a standard checklistpresented by the cochrane database. the articles were presented based on prismaformat. results: out of the 3 review articles and 736 research articles, which were retrieved, 13 studies were examined in full-text with especial focus on the quality of methodology sections. conclusion: based on the reviewed articles, that observing no significant impact following tt interventions does not mean that this approach is actually ineffective. it may just be due to inappropriate methodology and research design employed for investigation. therefore, we need to focus on the methodologies of these randomized control trials rather than their final results.