Psychological adjustment of critically injured patients three months after an unexpected, potentially life-threatening accident

• Cognitive processing and meaning theories suggest that a patient’s psychological adjustment following a traumatizing event depends on an ability to cognitively integrate the trauma event and restore a sense of meaning in life. These processes may be facilitated by using coping strategies such as sharing concerns, mobilizing support, and reframing. • A correlational study explored the magnitude of the relationships between psychological adjustment, cognitive processing, sense of meaning, and coping strategies in critically injured patients 3 months after a potentially life-threatening injury. • Fifty-one critically injured patients completed the Brief Symptom Inventory, Bradburn’s Psychological Well-Being Scale, Impact of Events Scale, the Meaning-of-Illness Questionnaire, and Family Crisis-Oriented Personal Evaluation Scale in face-to-face interviews 8–12 weeks after the accident. Bivariate and partial correlation coefficients were used to test the main hypothesis, and Pearson correlation coefficients, to address the three research questions. • The main hypothesis that psychological adjustment will be significantly related to cognitive processing, sense of meaning, and use of coping strategies in critically injured patients 3 months after the accident was partially upheld. • Depressive symptomatology was found to be significantly associated with increased cognitive processing efforts and a decreased ability to acknowledge the accident’s negative effects on the self. • In contrast, psychological well-being was found to be significantly associated with decreased cognitive processing efforts and an increased ability to acknowledge the accident’s negative effects on the self. • Restoring a sense of meaning, however, was found to be unrelated to sharing concerns, mobilizing support and re-framing. The potential theoretical and clinical implications of the findings for nursing practice are discussed.