The Relationship between Positive Automatic Thoughts, Feeling Socially Competent and Perception of Clinical Decision-Making with Happiness among Khuzestan Military Hospitals Nurses

Happiness of nurses is an important factor of their mental health, and it is essential for providing effective care for patients. This study aims to determine the relationship between positive automatic thoughts, feeling socially competent and perception of clinical decision-making with happiness among Khuzestan military hospital nurses.

The population consisted of all Khuzestan military hospital nurses from among whom 200 nurses were selected using the availability sampling method. The research method of this study is descriptive correlational. To collect the required data, the Ingram and Wisnicki Automatic Positive Thoughts Questionnaire (1988), the Fellner Social Competence Questionnaire (1990), the Salehi, et al. Clinical Decision-Making Questionnaire (2005) and the Argyle and Lu Happiness Questionnaire (1989) were used. Data analysis was carried out using Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis.

The findings revealed a positive relationship between positive automatic thoughts, feeling socially competent and perception of clinical decision-making with happiness among the nurses.  The regression analysis results further showed that positive automatic thoughts and feeling socially competent are good predictors for the criterion variable of happiness among the nurses (P<0.0001).

The results of this study indicated that promoting positive automatic thoughts, feeling socially competent and perception of clinical decision-making results in an increase in the happiness of nurses.