Open Collections

Chhun, Raymond

University of British Columbia

Nursing students face many challenges in undergraduate education. They are often exposed to complex academic and clinical situations that can cause or trigger past traumas, leaving them vulnerable to emotional and psychological fatigue. Nursing research on psychological trauma has evolved to produce important knowledge from patient and nurse perspectives, but little is known about psychological trauma as experienced by nursing students. Considering that most students will be struck with one or more major traumas and will likely be exposed to nurse-specific traumas after graduation, it was necessary to explore what resilient factors influence how students manage the everyday stress of psychological trauma and nursing education. Interpretive description was used to guide the research design and data analysis. The sample consisted of nine undergraduate nursing students in their first and second years of an accelerated two-year program in Western Canada. Data was collected using 45- to 90-minute semi-structured interviews. The key findings indicated that external protective factors of resilience were essential to cultivating resilience. Nursing students indeed have the internal resources to help them thrive in the most emotionally and physically demanding situations, but those internal resources are seldom useful unless they are also given the external resources they need to succeed. It was my hope that the findings and recommendations from this study enable nursing institutions, nursing administration, and faculty leaders to cultivate resilience in nursing students by creating learning environments that accommodate the needs of students as they cope with the everyday stressors of trauma and nursing school. Shifting nursing culture, trauma-informed educational practices (TIEP), psychological safety, and meaningful teacher-learner relationship are ways to cultivate resilience in nursing students.

Text

2025-03-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/82751

Nursing

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/