Structural Relations between Physical-Mental Health and Flourishing with Respect to Mediating Role of Positive Affection in Nursing Students in 2019

 Nursing students, as future nurses, will be the largest health care group and will affect the productivity and progress of the organization more than any other group of hospital staff. One of the factors that can influence this is the attention to the physical and mental health of the nurses. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the structural relations between physical-mental health and flourishing with respect to the mediating role of positive affection in nursing students.

This study was descriptive-correlational. To this end, a sample of 300 subjects (243 females and 57 males) was selected by stratified random sampling method among the nursing students of Fatemeh School of Nursing and Midwifery in Shiraz in 2019 and were evaluated using 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), positive and negative affection schedule (PANAS) and human flourishing questionnaire (HFQ). The data were evaluated using path analysis by statistical software SPSS-22 and AMOS-22.

Findings showed that flourishing subscales including positive affection and relationships both directly and indirectly affect the physical and mental health of nursing students through positive affection (p <0.05). Also, according to the findings, the variable of meaning in the final model, only indirectly through positive affection, causes a change in the level of physical and mental health of undergraduate nursing students. The pathway of positive affection to physical-mental health (β = 0.23) and the pathway of optimism to physical-mental health (β = 0.25) are statistically significant and indicate that they can have physical health. Explain the psychology of nursing students. In other words, 23% of physical-mental health is directly affected by positive affection and 25% of optimism.

According to the findings, since flourishing and positive affection had a positive effect on physical and mental health, it seems that flourishing and positive affection act as an effective mechanism to correct beliefs and with their growth and improvement can be used to prevent psychosomatic diseases as well as psychological problems of nursing students.