Effect of Selected Muscle Stretching Exercises on Primary Dysmenorrhoea among Student Nurses

Primary dysmenorrhoea is a painful menstrual flow in the absence of any pelvic pathology. The scientific evidence display that exercises are helpful to reduce the menstrual pain. Stretching exercise are being done to improve the elasticity of muscle and achieve comfortable muscle tone and also increase the thresh hold of pain.¹

To assess the effectiveness of selected muscle stretching exercises on primary dysmenorrhoea.

A Quantitative approach with experimental with multiple time series design was used to assess the effectiveness of selected muscle stretching exercises on primary dysmenorrhoea. Sixty seven student nurses with primary dysmenorrhoea were selected from Himalayan College of Nursing by using non probability purposive sampling technique and subjects were randomly assigned into Experimental group (n=33) and Control group (n=34). Muscle stretching exercises taught to the experimental group and practiced for 8 weeks (6 days/week, for 10 minutes daily) at hostel. Menstrual pain intensity was assessed by using Numerical pain rating scale. The post-test was conducted after 8 weeks of intervention.

After 8 weeks of muscles stretching exercises, the intensity of dysmenorrhoea was reduced from 5.48±1.41 to 4.33±1.31 in the experimental group (p<0.05). In the control group, no significant reduction of pain was observed at the level of < 0.05.

The study concludes that stretching exercises are effective in reducing pain intensity among student nurses with primary dysmenorrhoea. The present result suggested that selected muscle stretching exercises can be used as a non pharmacological method for pain relief in dysmenorrhoea.