The association between creativity, creative components of personality, and innovation among Taiwanese nursing students

•Taiwanese nursing students had high levels of innovation; creativity was moderate.•The creative personality component of imagination was highest, curiosity lowest.•Innovation was positively correlated with curiosity.•Methods that increase students’ curiosity and innovation could improve creativity. The link between creativity, aspects of personality associated with creativity, and innovation are unclear with regards to nurses and nursing education. This cross-sectional, descriptive, correlational study explored levels of creativity, creativity personality, and innovation among nursing students, and the association between these variables. Senior-year nursing students (N = 98) at a university in Northern Taiwan participated in this study. All were enrolled in a capstone course for developing patentable healthcare-related products. Verbal and Figural Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT-V and TTCT-F, respectively) measured creativity; the Affective Components of Creativity Scale (ACCS) evaluated creative personality; innovation was the mean product creativity score from the capstone course. Pearson’s test with Bonferroni’s post-hoc adjustment examined correlations. Scores for innovation were moderately high (mean = 91.37, SD = 2.83). Mean scores on the TTCT-F and TTCT-V were 40.05 (SD = 21.21) and 18.08 (SD = 13.94), respectively; level of creativity was moderate on the TTCT (mean = 58.13, SD = 30.47). For components of creative personality, the highest score was imagination (mean = 4.75, SD = 0.71); challenge and adventure were similar (2.71, SD = 0.31 and 2.53, SD = 0.25, respectively); curiosity was lowest (1.76, SD = 0.23). Mean total score for the ACCS was 3.15 (SD = 0.33). Innovation was correlated with curiosity (p < .001). The was no significant association between creativity and creative personality. The positive relationship between innovation and curiosity suggests implementing methods aimed at increasing curiosity and innovation could improve nursing students’ abilities to create innovative products.