Lived experience by Reiki Practitioners underlines the value of distant Reiki sessions. Now we have evidence of preliminary effectiveness of a distant Reiki service provided to NHS health professionals by the new not-for-profit service Reiki Medic-Care (www.reikimedic-care.org).
This is a world-first evaluation for distant Reiki and the importance of it cannot be overstated.
Staffed by qualified and experienced Reiki volunteers, Reiki Medic-Care is an evergreen project that aims to reduce burnout and stress amongst UK NHS medical professionals. A number of the clients to the service have come with long Covid and requested multiple sessions. Clients can opt into MYMOP-based (Measure Yourself Medical Outcome Profile) evaluations, giving before and after scores on five general wellbeing indices plus an option for an additional individual measure such as ‘back pain’ or similar.
The poster was presented at the conference Global Advances in Health and Medicine and published by Sage Journals. The poster includes updated results from those originally submitted. Printed abstract below by permission of SAGE publications.
Volunteers for the project are welcome. Please also spread news of the project to medical contacts at NHS hospitals who may benefit from the project.
Donations to support the work of the project can be sent via https://reikihealthcareresearch.org/donate/ Please specify Reiki Medic-Care as the intended recipient of the donation.
“Abstract Objective:
To conduct a pragmatic effectiveness trial of a Reiki program for healthcare professionals negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: Reiki Medic-Care is a non-profit organization that provides remote Reiki to National Health Service (NHS) healthcare professionals in the UK. Healthcare professionals (physicians, nurses, and ambulance paramedics) whose physical and/or mental health had been negatively impacted by COVID-19 were eligible to sign up for the Reiki program and were also invited to participate in the research study. Each participant was assigned eight certified, licensed, and fully insured Reiki practitioners who gave them 20 minutes of remote Reiki for four consecutive days. Participants’ stress, anxiety, pain, sleep quality and overall wellbeing were evaluated with 7-point numerical rating scales based on the Measure Yourself Medical Outcome Profile-based (MYMOP) questionnaire. Measures were completed by participants online when signing up to receive Reiki (pre) and the day following the final Reiki session (post). Participants were also asked to give written feedback about the sessions at post.
Results: Twenty healthcare professionals agreed to be in the study and provided some survey data (pre or post), and of those, seventeen participants completed both the pre and post survey (85% retention).
Paired samples t-tests revealed statistically significant improvements in stress (p =.001, d = 1.06), anxiety (p =.001, d = .94), pain (p =.003, d = .86), and wellbeing (p =.029, d = .61) from pre to post. There were no significant differences in sleep quality (p =.150, d = .37). Participants also provided positive feedback about the program, including feeling more relaxed, calm, and resilient.
Conclusion: The Reiki program for healthcare professionals demonstrates preliminary effectiveness for improving stress, anxiety, pain and wellbeing in frontline healthcare workers negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Data collection is ongoing, and future research will include a larger sample size and long-term follow-up”
Published in Global Advances in Health and Medicine Volume 10: 1–64 © The Author(s) 2021 Article, 2021 Integrative Medicine & Health Symposium Abstracts Zixin Shu, Kai Chang, Yana Zhou, Chaoan Peng, Xugui Li, Wei Cai, Li Wei, Boli Zhang, Xiaolin Tong, Baoyan Liu, Xuezhong Zhou, Kam Wa Chan, Xiaodong Li excerpt p 50 p13.07
Abstract reprinted with kind permission of SAGE publications. Please note that any further usage of this abstract requires direct permission from SAGE.