Factors Affecting Post Traumatic growth in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury: A Phenomenological Study

Spinal cord injury is one of the problems of human societies, which causes many physical and emotional problems for a person and will have consequences for personal, family and social problems. The purpose of this study was to investigate the phenomenological factors affecting post-traumatic growth in patients with spinal cord injury.

The qualitative research project was based on the phenomenological approach. The statistical population of the study included people with spinal cord injury in Isfahan in 2018. Among them, 16 individuals were selected based on the criteria for entering and leaving the research, semi-structured interviews, and data saturation. Then, the interviews were analyzed using a colaizzi method.

As a result of the main themes, their sub-themes and semantic units supporting the theme in five main themes and 25 sub-themes include the underlying factors (severity and nature of injury, cause of injury, marital status and education), positive psychological characteristics (internal motivation, optimism and hope for recovery, personality abilities and acceptance of injury), social factors (participation in support groups for spinal cord injury, job creation, financial emotional support of family and others), medical care and Psychosocial education (work therapy and physiotherapy, rehabilitation of doing personal tasks, learning job  skills, received individual and group psychological education) and spirituality (Helping people with similar problems, meaning, Belief in God's wisdom, Cultural beliefs and values). Each of the above themes has several semantic units supporting.

The discovered topics with the phenomenological method, based on the experience of living, provide new information on the factors affecting post-traumatic growth after spinal cord injury, which requires the elaboration of the life experiences of these individuals by caregivers, psychologists and experts.