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Nursing students’ adverse childhood experience scores: a national survey

  • Carey S. Clark EMAIL logo and Abou El-Makarim Aboueissa
Published/Copyright: December 28, 2021

Abstract

Objectives

To determine the adverse childhood experience scores (ACES) of nursing students in the United States.

Methods

Utilized the standardized Family Health History Questionnaire to determine the ACES of a national sample of nursing students. Simple descriptive statistics were used to analyze the findings.

Results

Nursing students ACES indicate that they enter academia with a much higher baseline of childhood trauma versus the general population. Over 40% of nursing students surveyed had an ACES of 4 or more versus the national average of 12.5–13.3% of the general population having an ACES of 4 or more.

Conclusions

This data provides support for Conti-O'Hare's theory of nurses as wounded healer. Nursing faculty should consider nursing students to be members of a vulnerable population and revise curricula to support nursing students stress resileince.


Corresponding author: Carey S. Clark, PhD, RN, RYT, AHN-BC, FAAN, Professor of Nursing, Nursing, Pacific College of Oriental Medicine – New York Campus, PO Box 89, Denmark, ME, 04022, USA, E-mail:

  1. Research funding: None declared.

  2. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: Authors state no conflict of interest.

  4. Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individuals included in this study.

  5. Ethical approval: The primary researcher’s institution Institutional Review Board deemed the study exempt from review.

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Received: 2021-02-02
Accepted: 2021-12-08
Published Online: 2021-12-28

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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