Aromatherapy in nursing students to reduce stress

Background. The use of traditional and complementary medicine is the result of unifying two types of ancestral medicines, which covers part of the professional practices, one of them is aromatherapy, which is a complementary health therapy, using essential oils as the main therapeutic agents, can be applied through inhalation and massage. In the inhalation mechanism, essential oils can communicate signals to the olfactory system and stimulate the brain. Objective. To evaluate the effect of aromatherapy with lavender essence to reduce stress in nursing students. Methodology. Quantitative approach, quasi-experimental design and correlational scope, with a sample of 28 Nursing students. The analysis of the quantitative data was processed through tabulation in the Excel platform and statistically analyzed in the SPSS version 29.0 software program and using the student t test. Results. The normality of the pre- and post-test values ​​was checked, whose significance values ​​of the Shapiro Wilk test were > 0.05, determining a normal distribution of the data. Therefore, the parametric Student's T test for related samples was applied, yielding a significance value of 0.00 < 0.05. Conclusion. The researcher's alternative hypothesis was accepted, that is, that aromatherapy does reduce students' stress.