COVID-19 was a global pandemic that negatively impacted both psychiatric-mental health nurses and their clients. The magnitude of this event opened the door for shared trauma to occur. A shared trauma (ST) exists when a health care professional (e.g., psychiatric-mental health nurse) and client experience the same collective trauma (Tosone, 2012; Tosone, 2021). ST in health care professionals (HCPs) may cause blurred boundaries, anxiety, symptoms of posttraumatic stress, and moral distress (Bauwens & Tosone, 2010; Tosone et al., 2015; Xue et al., 2022). Although ST has been underexplored for nurses generally, we sought to explore ST for nurses working specifically in a psychiatric mental health setting.

The Shared Trauma Professional Posttraumatic Growth (STPPG) Inventory was developed in 2014 to understand how ST impacted social workers after Hurricane Katrina (Tosone et al., 2014). In 2011, Tosone et al. used the Post 9/11 Quality of Professional Practice survey to measure ST and its relationship to compassion fatigue/secondary traumatic stress and posttraumatic distress disorder (PTSD) in social workers. A follow-up study in 2014 by Tosone et al. used the Post Katrina Quality of Professional Practice survey to measure ST and how it related to PTSD and secondary trauma in social workers. These prior studies were foundational to the development of the STPPG as they established that ST was a measurable construct (Tosone et al., 2014).

This study will assess if the STPPG may help measure the impact of ST among psychiatric-mental health nurses. Evaluating the psychometric properties of the STPPG for psychiatric-mental health nurses through an exploratory factor analysis is a necessary first step in using this inventory as part of a comprehensive exploration of the impact of ST among psychiatric-mental health nurses.