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.