Wong, K.W., Wu, X., Dong, Y. · International Journal of Mental Health Nursing · 2024
Across 17 RCTs, not all interventions led to positive outcomes; GRADE and risk-of-bias assessment revealed low to very low certainty evidence overall, with high heterogeneity among outcomes, though subgroup analysis showed greater success for interventions targeting nurses caring for COVID-19 patients specifically.
Picture a nurse coming off a third overnight shift during a hospital surge, with no time or budget for formal counseling. If future, better-designed trials find that simple mind-body practices genuinely help frontline healthcare workers recover from burnout, the fact that tapping needs no counselor or appointment once learned means hospitals could offer a short reset nurses do themselves between patients, rather than requiring them to leave the floor for treatment. This review doesn't show that yet, but it points toward what's still worth chasing.
Because this review bundled many different interventions together and came out with genuinely low-certainty, mixed evidence, the more useful next step is a dedicated trial isolating tapping specifically — with objective burnout markers like cortisol, heart-rate variability, or inflammatory panels — rather than folding it into a grab-bag comparison. Testing brief, self-guided sessions nurses could do between patients during a shift, rather than requiring them to leave the floor, would also tell us whether a tool like this is actually usable under real hospital conditions.
| Design | Meta-analysis |
|---|---|
| Participants | 17 studies pooled |
| Population | nurses working in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic |
| Comparison group | varied controls across included RCTs |
| Outcome measures | anxiety, depression, stress, mental well-being, and burnout measures (varied across studies) |
| Journal | International Journal of Mental Health Nursing |
| Year | 2024 |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Language | English |
| Method | EFT / tapping |
| Publication type | Review or meta-analysis |
| Verification | ✓ Confirmed against the primary source |
Wong, K.W., Wu, X., & Dong, Y. (2024). Interventions to reduce burnout and improve the mental health of nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review of randomised controlled trials with meta-analysis. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.13251
This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping. Explore more studies on Burnout & Work Stress · Anxiety · Depression · Stress & Cortisol
A ready-made graphic — right-click or long-press to save the image.