PURPOSE: The anxiety and stress of nursing students on performance intramuscular injection diminished nursing skill performance. The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of the guided imagery program on anxiety, stress and nursing skill performance of nursing students. METHOD: The study design was time series with a nonequivalent control group pretest- posttest study. The Data were collected from the 30th of Oct. to the 6th of Nov. 2001. The objects of this study were 36 sophomores of university(18 for the experimental group, 18 for the control group). The Instruments used in this study were State Trait Anxiety Inventory developed by Spielberger (1972), Visual Analogue Scale for Stress and Nursing skill performance developed by the researcher. The guided imagery was provided through audiotapes to the subjects for 8 minutes. The pretest was given before the therapy to measure variables for both groups and the posttests were performed after intervention. The data were analyzed by the SAS program using t-test and paired t-test. RESULT: The results of this study are as follows. The level of anxiety of students who received the guided imagery were significantly lower than that of control group. the level of stress had a deeling tendency and the nursing skill performance level was significantly higher than that of control group. CONCLUSION: The guided imagery suggested as an effective nursing intervention did reduce the anxiety and promoted nursing skill performance of nursing students.

PURPOSE: This study was to identify the trends and contents of imagery interventions and to evaluate the effects of imagery interventions by using meta-analysis. METHOD: The materials used for this study were 15 imagery intervention studies carried out from Jan. 1995 to Dec. 2001. The studies were analyzed and evaluated in different categories: 1) types of dependent variables 2) types of imagery 3) interval of imagery 4) total duration of imagery 5) sample characteristics 6) intervention method. RESULT: 1) Behavioral imagery was more prevalent than dynamic imagery. There were wide variations in duration, and interval of interventions. Imagery intervention had moderate effects on psychological variables (state of anxiety, depression & and stress etc.) and had moderate to large effects on physiological variable(pulse rate, cortisol etc.). Behavioral imagery had larger effects than dynamic imagery. Imagery applied to the public had larger effect on decreasing the state of anxiety and stress than applied to the patients. But imagery applied to the patients had a larger effect on decreasing depression than applied to the public. The imagery intervention method by using the individual approach had greater effect than group approach method. CONCLUSION: These results of this study will be used to guide the development of imagery interventions to nursing practice. Also, various types of imagery interventions need to be developed based on the characteristics of nursing practice.