Examining Relationships Among Nursing Students' Views of Suffering, Positive Thinking, and Professional Quality of Life.

Background: Exposure to suffering can lead to compassion fatigue in undergraduate nursing students.

Objective: Guided by resilience theory, a cross-sectional, correlational design was used to investigate the potential moderating effect of positive thinking skills on the relationships between views of suffering, compassion fatigue, and compassion satisfaction.

Results: In 157 undergraduate nursing students, multiple regressions revealed that views of suffering and positive thinking explained 23.8% of the variance in compassion satisfaction (F_11,145 = 4.121, P < .001), and 21.9% of the variance in burnout (F_11,144 = 3.786, P < .001). The Suffering God view, which stresses the presence of a compassionate deity amid suffering, and positive thinking had significant main effects on compassion satisfaction (β = 0.349, P = .025; and β = 0.309, P < .001, respectively). Positive thinking, the Suffering God view, and the Random view, in which the occurrence of suffering is random and purposeless, had significant main effects on burnout (β = -0.280, P < .001; β = -0.392, P = .014; and β = -0.206, P = .014, respectively). The Unorthodox view, in which a deity exists that allows suffering, had a significant main effect on secondary traumatic stress (β = 0.232, P = .027). Positive thinking did not moderate any of the relationships between the views of suffering and the dependent variables.

Conclusions: Knowledge of these relationships can aid in the assessment of nursing students at risk for poor outcomes and guide intervention development to promote professional quality of life.