The Relationship Between Traumatic Growth and Meaning of Life in Nursing Students

The study aimed to identify the relationship between traumatic growth and the meaning of life among nursing students and examined the influential variables.

The study has a cross-sectional, descriptive, and correlational design based on self-reported data.

This study was conducted with 649 undergraduate nursing students in Turkey from May to September 2022. Data was collected using the Personal Information Form, Traumatic Experiences List (TEL), Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), and it was analysed using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, Student-t test, post hoc test, Scheffe test, Pearson correlation, and Multiple linear regression.

It was found that 40.5% of the nursing students had their own traumatic experience (15.7% loss of a loved person, 5.1% physical, sexual or emotional assault). It was seen that the PTGI total mean scores varied between groups concerning their class grades, experiencing trauma or being exposed to the trauma of a relative, and receiving psychological support. The MLQ total mean scores varied by class grade, economic status, and exposure to a relative's traumatic event. In the regression analysis, post-traumatic growth, economic status, and a relative's traumatic experience explained 10.6% of the variance in meaning in life. The relatively low explanatory power of the model and the below-average levels of post-traumatic growth may reflect the cumulative and recent nature of large-scale stressors (e.g., pandemic-related disruptions and societal traumas), as well as insufficient time for cognitive processing and meaning reconstruction following trauma.

It was revealed that the students' traumatic growth scores were below the mean; their meaning of life scores were above the mean, and the meaning of life increased as post-traumatic growth increased. As can be seen, although a traumatic experience is a stressful, destructive experience that leads to negative experiences and even disorders, it is also an opportunity that allows people to create a new structure and become more functional than before.

Nursing students share their perspectives on their traumatic growth and on the meaning of life.

These findings will provide important information for nursing education, aiming to increase students' psychological resilience to traumatic events, improve their coping skills in the face of negative events, organise training in coping with trauma, and ensure their psychosocial adaptation.