Touch and Massage on Labor Pain Intensity During First Stage of Active Phase

Introduction: Labor pain is a challenging issue for nurses designing intervention protocols. Touch and massage therapy is one of non-pharmacology approaches that they could do during labor process. The study was conducted to assess the effectiveness in reducing pain intensity scale on the labor during first stage of active phase. Methods: A quasi-experimental approach was conducted and a purposive sampling technique was used to recruit 56 women who expected to have normal childbirth at a public hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia. They randomly assigned to either received touch and massage intervention (experiment) or not (control). The labor pain intensity was using Verbal Description Scale (VDS) with descriptive statistics , paired, and independent t-test . Results: The result showed that touch and massage therapy had a significant impact on the experimental group (t cal I 2.839, p 0.05) and post-test (t cal I 10.77, p<0.05). The study found that a combination of touch and massage therapy was effective to reduce labor pain during active stage. Conclusions: Touch and massage therapy can reduce labor pain intensity, and at the same time serve as closeness and encouragement during the first stage of active phase. It is a cost-effective nursing intervention and can positively influence the quality of women’s birth experiences.