Association between trauma-informed care attitudes and humanistic care ability among nursing interns: a cross-sectional study

Trauma-informed care (TIC) emphasizes recognizing the widespread impact of trauma and creating a safe and supportive environment for both patients and healthcare providers. Nursing interns, as future frontline caregivers, are essential to implement TIC in clinical settings. Although humanistic care ability that reflects empathy, respect, and compassion may influence TIC adoption, limited research has examined this relationship among nursing interns.

A cross-sectional study of 769 nursing interns was conducted between September and December 2024. Data were collected using the Chinese version of the attitudes related to trauma-informed care scale and the caring ability inventory. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the data. Independent-samples t-tests or one-way ANOVA were first used to compare TIC attitude scores across participant groups, and Pearson's correlation analysis was then used to examine associations between TIC attitudes and humanistic care ability. Variables identified in the univariate analyses, together with educational level and curricular background-related variables, were subsequently entered into hierarchical multiple linear regression to examine factors independently associated with TIC attitudes.

The mean ARTIC-C item score was 4.52 ± 0.85, and the mean CAI score was 184.95 ± 28.26. The total ARTIC-C score and its six dimensions were positively correlated with the total CAI score and its three dimensions (P < 0.01). Univariate analysis showed significant differences in ARTIC-C scores by educational level, exposure to trauma patients, self-perceived psychological endurance, job satisfaction, and participation in TIC- or humanistic care-related courses or training (P < 0.05). Hierarchical regression analysis showed that humanistic care ability explained an additional 11.0% of the variance in TIC attitudes and remained significantly positively associated with TIC attitudes in the final model (β = 0.340, P < 0.001). The final model explained 27.1% of the variance.

Nursing interns reported a mean ARTIC-C item score of 4.52 ± 0.85 on a 7-point scale. Humanistic care ability was significantly associated with more positive TIC attitudes. The integration of TIC content into humanistic care education may help support trauma responsiveness and empathy among nursing interns. These findings support the development of culturally tailored educational strategies to strengthen TIC in nursing education.