The purpose of this study was to compare the feeling state guided imagery(FSGI) and end state guided imagery(ESGI) on stress and performance of an intramuscular injection of nursing students.

The design was a time series with a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest study. Data was collected from the 23 rd to the 25th of Nov. 2004. The subjects of this study were 40 female sophomores (21 for the ESGI, 19 for the FSGI). The instruments used in this study were the Visual Analogue Scale for Stress and the Nursing Skill Performance Check-list on Intramuscular Injection developed by the researchers(10 items). Guided imagery was provided through audiotapes for 8 minutes. A pretest was given before applying the guided imagery, posttest 1 was performed after the intervention, posttest 2 was performed before the intramuscular injection and then evaluation of the performance of the intramuscular injection was done. Data was analyzed using t-test, and Repeated Measures ANOVA.

The level of stress for those who received the ESGI and FEGI was not significant and the level of the nursing skill performance for those who received the ESGI was significantly higher than that of students who received the FEGI.

The use of ESGI has an effect on learning psychomotor nursing skills and further research is needed on stress.