Objective: This study examined whether creative thinking by nursing students in an associate degree nursing program moderates stress and promotes students' thriving.

Methods: Eighty nursing students in a New Jersey suburban community college were studied. Relationships between demographic variables, creative thinking, and thriving were examined. Creative thinking was measured using Runco's Ideational Behavior Scale – Short Form (RIBS). Thriving was measured with the Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-Being (PWB). Distributions, bivariate relationships, and multiple regressions were examined. Seventeen follow-up interviews used Charmaz's grounded theory approach to elucidate nursing students' perceptions of stress, creative thinking, and thriving during school.

Results: Inverse relationships between stress and thriving (r = -0.23, p = 0.044), and stress and environmental mastery (r = -0.33, p = 0.002) indicated that students' well-being was adversely affected since entering nursing school. A positive correlation between progress in nursing school and students' ratings of purpose in life was seen (p = 0.04). No quantitative relationships were found between other demographic variables, creative thinking, and thriving.

Interview data revealed that all interviewees used creative thinking but did not consider themselves to be consistently thriving. Students used creative problem-solving to individualize stress management skills to survive nursing school. A model was created to illustrate relationships between thriving and surviving in community college nursing students.

Conclusions: This study suggests that students do not report consistent thriving in nursing school, despite evidence that creative thinking is used. Research should continue to investigate creative thinking to mitigate stress in nursing programs.