CARING PROFESSIONAL HEALTH: A POWERFUL OF YOGA

INTRODUCTION Health professionals and medical science students have high levels of stress, anxiety and performance‐related musculoskeletal disorders. Long workloads and strenuous shifts, feelings of empathy for the suffering of patients and families, demands for cleanliness and hospital conduct, and the need for many hours of study cause mood swings and emotional instability, diminish immune system function and increase psychosomatic diseases in students and health professionals. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effects for health professionals and students that participated in YogaSanta Program, an opened and free program of Yoga. MATERIAL and METHODS The World Health Organization Quality of Life assessment (WHOQOL‐BREF) was sent by e‐mail for health professional as well as for Medicine, Nursing e Speech Therapist students from Santa Casa de São Paulo School of Medical Sciences(São Paulo – Brazil). Who have shown WHOOQL‐BREF score under 50% were invited to participate of “YogaSanta Program”. YogaSanta aims “to take care of people who care for people” and offer free Yoga sessions for all. We selected 22 adults that practice one‐hour yoga session twice a week for 3 months consecutively. The sessions included Pranayama (breathing exercises), Asanas (postures), Yoganidra (relaxation) and Dhyana (meditation). All participants completed Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for assessing stress‐level in two different moments: (VAS after = VAS‐A) immediately after Yoga class and (VAS before = VAS‐B) just before Yoga class. VAS varies from zero to 10 where “zero” corresponds to “no stress” and “10” corresponds to the “worst stress level”. VAS‐B and VAS‐A were compared through the t‐paired test and the results are shown in this study. RESULTS From 22 participants, 6 occupied administrative functions the hospital, 13 were students and two were faculty members. The mean ± standard deviation (SD) of participants age was 32.3 ± 12.2 yrs (Range: 22 – 60 yrs). The mean ± SD of VAS‐B and VAS‐A were compared (EVA‐B 3.34 ± 1.4 vs. VAS‐A 1.89 ± 1.4) and showed a low correlation = 0.574 with p<0.001. DISCUSSION and CONCLUSION Some previous articles suggest that physiological benefits like muscle strength, flexibility, blood circulation and oxygen uptake, hormone functions and the relaxation induced by meditation helps to stabilize the autonomic nervous system and this help yoga practitioners become more resilient to stressful conditions and reduce a variety of important risk factors for different diseases, especially cardio‐respiratory disorders. Based on this and the results presented above, we believe that the YogaSanta program is an efficient option for producing improvements in psychological well‐being and decreasing mood disorders in health professionals and health students, thus contributing to improving performance and quality of life and help to stress reduction.