Prediction of Secondary Traumatic Stress and Post Traumatic Growth Based on Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Nurses Providing Services to Earthquake Victims in Kermanshah

The earthquake is a natural disaster that has many psychological effects on the survivors and nurses that are associated with them. The purpose of this study was to predict secondary traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth based on cognitive emotion regulation in nurses providing services to earthquake victims in Kermanshah.

The present study is a descriptive-correlational study. The population includes all nurses providing health care services to earthquake victims in Kermanshah city in 2017. Among them, 181 nurses were selected by available sampling method. To collect the data, the secondary traumatic stress scale (Bried et al. 2004), post traumatic growth (Tedsi and Calhoun 1996) and cognitive emotion regulation (Gennowski et al. 2001) were used. Data were analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient and simultaneous regression and using SPSS software version 25.

The results showed that catastrophizing (β = 0.27, t = 3.11), and other-blame (β = 0.21, t = 2.87) could predict secondary traumatic stress. Also, self-blame (β = 0.16, t = 2.85), positive focus (β = 0.17, t = 2.31), focus on planning (β = 0.23, t = 2.63) the evaluation (β = 0.35, t3 = 3.89) and putting into perspective (β = 0.33, t = 2.13) could predict vicarious post traumatic growth.

Regarding to these results and the importance of nurses in community health, training adaptive strategies for cognitive emotion regulation is necessary for improving the performance and enhancing nursing mental health.