ESTIMATING THE RATE OF POST-TRAUMATIC GROWTH OF NURSES WORKING IN THE PEDIATRIC DEPARTMENT DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN HOSPITALS AFFILIATED WITH THE IRAN UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES IN 2021

In today's era, when the country is involved with the coronavirus disease and the recent incidents and events have increased the number of people visiting hospitals, and according to the results of the studies, nurses experience more work pressure and stress. Due to the nature of their work, they are more exposed to psychological harm, so it is necessary to examine their post-traumatic growth and by knowing this, we can promote the strengthening factors of nurses as much as possible. In this direction, we conducted a study regarding the assessment of post-traumatic growth in nurses caring for children with covid-19 disease.

This study was descriptive research. The research population was nurses working in children's departments of teaching hospitals affiliated with Iran University. The samples were selected using census sampling. The researcher attended the hospital in different shifts, introduced himself to the nurses, explained the research objectives, and asked if they were willing to participate in the study. The participants signed the consent form. The approximate duration of answering the questionnaires was 1 to 20 minutes. After collecting the data, it was analyzed using SPSS ver. 20.0 software. The significance level was considered 0.05.

In this study, 168 nurses, including 157 women and 11 men, were included. The mean score of the post-traumatic growth scale in nurses working in the children's department during the COVID-19 pandemic was 49±23.21, which is lower than the average of the tools used and shows that post-traumatic growth in nurses working in the pediatric department is low. Nurses received acceptable and lower scores in the dimensions of personal strength, spiritual change, and facilities, and they had the highest score in the dimension of valuing life. The results showed no statistically significant difference between the mean score of post-traumatic growth in different demographic variables; only the difference between the mean score of the component of spiritual change in the group of different ages and work histories was found to be statistically significant.

The present study's mean score is lower according to the distance between the post-traumatic growth score and the total score. This group is vulnerable and needs more comprehensive measures and investigations. Considering the continuity of contact with cases of illness, nursing managers must investigate and address this issue to promote and facilitate this phenomenon and develop counseling and psychological sessions to improve the mental health of nurses.