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Context: The old age is a crucial phase where the physiological, psychological and socio-cultural changes in elderly contribute to the development of stress. 236 elderly people per ten thousand suffer from mental illness mainly due to stress, heart disease, stroke and cancer. Practice of progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is the simplest and effective method to decrease muscle tension, reduce the stress and to lower blood pressure. Aims: This study aimed to assess the level of stress and blood pressure among elderly with hypertension, evaluate the effectiveness of progressive muscle relaxation technique on stress and blood pressure among elderly with hypertension, identify the relationship between the stress level and blood pressure level among elderly with hypertension and associate the stress and blood pressure with the demographic variables among elderly with hypertension. Materials and methods: Research design adopted for the study was an experimental pretest posttest control group design. The study was conducted in selected villages of rural health and training centre of SRMC & RI at vayalanallur. Sixty elderly with hypertension in the age group of 60-70 years who are having mild and moderate level of stress and blood pressure. Background variables were collected. Stress level was assessed by perceived stress scale (PSS) and blood pressure was measured by sphygmomanometer. The study group (n=30) demonstrated the progressive muscle relaxation technique for 20 minutes for 21 days. Control group followed routine activities. The data were collected at four phases: The survey (pretest), demonstration of PMR, practice of PMR for 21 days, posttest on the 22 nd day after intervention. During posttest the stress and blood pressure were measured. Results: There were considerable variations in level of stress and blood pressure in the posttests as viewed with the pretest score of the study group at P

Background: One of the major health problems in our country is unsanitary conditions especially poor hand hygiene leads to a rigorous public health hazard to children in the school. Children are not aware of important of hand hygiene at school level. Health education is considered necessary for better knowledge. Materials and Methods: Quantitative quasi experimental randomized one group pretest and posttest design study was carried out to find out the effectiveness of hand hygiene teaching on knowledge, compliance and to correlate the level of hand hygiene knowledge with compliance of hand washing among the students. The knowledge was assessed by questionnaire and compliance was assessed by sterile hand swab collection to do bacteriological culture test in the microbiology laboratory. Among six primary schools in the Mugallivakkam village at Kancheepuram District one primary school was selected using simple lottery method. Five students from 2 nd , 3rd, 4th and 5 th standard were selected using simple random sampling. The total sample size was 20. The period of data collection was from 16-6-2012 to 13-7-2012. The 20 primary school students were split into four subgroups of each consisting of five school children. Then teaching programme on hand hygiene was given using laptop. Posttest was conducted on knowledge and compliance after three weeks. Results: The mean value of knowledge between the pretest and posttest showed a vast statistically significant difference at p