Correlation between stigma and posttraumatic growth in female infertility patients

Objective To explore the current situation of stigma and posttraumatic growth in female infertility patients, and to analyze the correlation between them. Methods From January to May 2019, this study selected 110 female infertility patients of reproductive medicine center in a ClassⅢ Grade A hospital of Zhejiang Province as subjects by convenience sampling. Those infertility patients were investigated with the general information questionnaire, Infertility Stigma Scale (ISS) and the Post-traumatic Growth Inventory-Chinese version (PTGI-C) . A total of 110 questionnaire were sent out and 104 valid of them were collected. Results Among 104 female infertility patients, the score of ISS was (67.14±14.33) with the intermediate level; the score of PTGI-C was (63.92±11.76) also with the intermediate level. There were statistical differences in the scores of post-traumatic growth among female infertility patients with different education levels, characteristics and whether being the only child (P<0.05) . The scores of ISS of female infertility patients had statistically negative correlations with the total score and dimension scores of PTGI-C (P<0.01) . Hierarchical regression analysis showed that the main influencing factors of posttraumatic growth in female infertility patients were the education levels, years of infertility, total score of stigma and scores of emotion and behavior with statistical differences (P<0.05) . Conclusions Stigma of female infertility patients is negatively correlated with the posttraumatic growth, which points that nurses could positively reduce the stigma of those patients so as to improve their posttraumatic growth. Key words: Female; Infertility; Stigma; Posttraumatic growth