Relaxation techniques
The relaxation techniques included patients reading
relaxing sentences, slowly without music, using an introductory
tape and earphones while they rested in bed
concentrating on relaxing successive muscle groups for
10–20 min without any muscle contraction.5,6 The implementation
of the technique took 5 min, repeated three
times.
Two bilingual linguists, who were fluent in both
languages, translated the content of the audiotape from
English (the original language) to Persian separately.
Another expert reviewed the translations to identify
inconsistencies. Minor revisions were suggested, resulting
in one Persian version of the scale. This was translated
back from Persian to English by two bilingual language
experts. The back-translated version and the original were
compared and found to be highly similar in meaning and
content. An expert panel, consisting of eight health-care
providers (a physician, two faculty members of a nursing
school, two nurse managers, a psychologist and two clinical
nurses), was asked to listen to the audiotape and rate
the content of the Persian version based on its clarity and
simplicity. Further minor changes resulted and were
pilot-tested with five patients. This final version was used
for the data collection.