Cognitive emotional regulation in physiotherapy students in Croatia

Cognitive emotional regulation refers to a conscious or unconscious process that affects an individual's emotions and the physical and mental health of the individual. The aim of this study was to detect strategies of cognitive emotional regulation used by physiotherapy students in stressful situations.

The study was conducted from January to March 2022 and enrolled 372 students. An announcement was posted electronically on the web page of each physiotherapy study in Croatia, inviting students to participate in the study. Each participant provided written informed consent. The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire was used in the study for detecting cognitive emotional strategies that students use in stressful situations. Statistical analysis of data included descriptive statistics of data groups where values were expressed as mean and standard deviation. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to test the normality of the distribution. To test the differences between two independent groups, the Mann-Whitney U rank sum test was applied, while the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test was used to test the differences of several subgroups of variables. Categorical variables were tested with Fischer's exact test or chi-square test.

The most frequently used emotional cognitive regulation strategies are acceptance and positive reappraisal. There is a statistically significant difference in the use of self-blame (p < .001), rumination (p < .001) and blaming others (p = 0.018) in relation to gender. Also, there is a statistically significant difference in the use of acceptance (p = 0.022), rumination (p < .001) and blaming others (p = 0.049) in relation to the year of study.

Education of physiotherapy students to the use of adaptive strategies could have a positive effect on the students' learning quality, their decision-making abilities and the quality of physiotherapy provided to patients. Encouraging physiotherapy students to engage in cognitively adaptive ways of thinking can serve as a solid method to help students in an academic and professional environment.