Emotions reflected in colours: experiences of nursing students during the COVID-19 period

• Published in: BMC nursing 2024-08, Vol.23 (1), p.575-11, Article 575
• Main Authors: Atay, Eda, Dirgar, Ezgi, Pehlivan, Kadiriye, Tosun, Betül, Ayaz, Ahmet, Yava, Ayla, Leyva-Moral, Juan M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anxiety; Color; Colours; COVID-19; COVID-19, fear; Data collection; Emotions; Epidemics; Fear & phobias; Health attitudes; Learning; Negative emotions; Nursing care; Nursing education; Nursing students; Pandemic; Pandemics; Positive emotions; Psychological aspects; Psychological research; Qualitative research; Sociodemographics; Students; Turkey
• ISSN: 1472-6955; 1472-6955
• DOI: 10.1186/s12912-024-02256-6

The aim of this study was to identify nursing students' fears and emotions and to concretise the metaphors they used to describe their feelings towards the COVID-19 pandemic. This study was conducted with nursing students at a foundation university between December 2021 and February 2022 using a sequential mixed methods research design. In the quantitative part of the study, 323 nursing students answered the 'Positive and Negative Emotion Scale' and the 'COVID-19 Fear Scale'. In the qualitative part, students were asked to metaphorise COVID-19 with a colour and 21 in-depth interviews were conducted on the reasons for choosing this colour. The average age of the students participating in the study was 21.41 ± 1.97 years and 78% of them were female. It was observed that 15.8 of the students had previously tested positive for COVID-19. Most of the participants (98.5%) were vaccinated against COVID-19 and 31.9% had a relative who died due to COVID-19. When the participants were asked which colour they compared COVID-19 to, it was observed that more than half of them chose red (51.4%) among bright colours and 13% chose black among dark colours. In this study, it was determined that students who chose dark colours to describe COVID-19 had higher COVID-19 Fear and Negative Emotion Scale scores. In in-depth interviews, it was observed that students who chose dark colours were more deeply affected by the COVID-19 process, while students who chose light colours associated this period with negative emotions. In this study, it was observed that nursing students' feelings and thoughts about the COVID-19 period in line with their experiences affect the choice of colour in metaphorisation.