Reiki Program Eval. @ the VA Hospital

After two years and more than 1,200, 10-minute reiki sessions at the Jesse Brown VA in Chicago, we have definitely helped a LOT of veterans and raised awareness of this amazing, energy healing modality. We've received feedback that reiki has helped with everything from PTSD to phantom limb pain. And the staff have been hearing about reiki's benefits directly from their patients. We even get referrals from doctors and psychotherapists these days. But we didn't have presentable data until we conducted a program evaluation survey of 135 participants. 

We asked them to complete a form before and after their session, using the Wong-Baker scale to indicate their current state of stress or pain. We also invited them to provide words describing their reiki experience. 

The results indicated a 61.7% decrease in distress following a 10-minute reiki session (30% is clinically significant).

The graphic below was created from the words the vets provided. Larger words indicate they were provided at a higher frequency. The most common are obvious, but my favorites are, "witnessed," and "euphoria."

This information is now available to be distributed to VA staff.